I’m all for horticulture, but I have no idea what this plant is. I’ve seen the plant before, usually out in the woods somewhere on a hiking trail where it usually stays low to the ground and looks about like a cabbage. As it happens, this one and a few others are growing in my backyard near the ground hog tunnels, where they also usually stay low to the ground. The leaves at the bottom always grow to a full eighteen inches long, and the leaves in the center more typically bunch up loosely, not as tight as in a cabbage ball. The leaves are thick, and fuzzy like one of those velvet Elvis paintings.
Admittedly, the plants in my yard usually get mowed over, but somehow this one escaped this year due to it’s position between groundhog tunnels. When it first started to bolt, I took notice and started watching it grow. When the crown, or seed pod, got to a foot tall, I figured that would be about the end of it. Not to be. The thing just kept growing. In the picture on this page it’s just over six feet tall and it does appear to have finally quit growing upward as the center pod has lost it’s flowers and starting turning brownish. In the mean time you can see what are usually call suckers on a tomato plant around the center that are still growing and flowering with the small yellow flowers.
The photo on this page also shows how the weather and aging have begun to spoil it’s better appearance, however, the cover page photo was taken a few weeks earlier when the plant was about five and a half feet tall and the large fuzzy leaves were healthier, greener and still holding up. In the cover photo, the crown suckers hadn’t yet started growing except for one that I had removed like on a tomato plant. After that I decided to just see what the natural course of the plant will be.
If you know anything about this plant, please send me an email, and I’ll share that with my visitors.
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© 2017 – Jim Casey
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