When I saw the first of these plants pop up in the flowerbed where I had recently planted flower seeds, I thought they were some of the various old seeds I had tossed out there just to get rid of them. They were in the right area to be sprouts from my haphazard seeding, and I hadn’t ever seen anything like it in the yard before. But … seeing as I did not plant any seeds anywhere else in the yard and there are hundreds of these things popping up and covering about 20% of my front lawn, it isn’t something I planted.

I have already spent too long looking at photos of flowers and weeds and not finding anything to match it. Therefore, I toss it out to you, dear readers, in the hope someone will know what this plant is.

They are really somewhat pretty, but they do seem to be rather invasive and weed-like in nature. We have never had these in our yard before, and suddenly, they are everywhere! I have no idea where they came from. The ones in the flowerbed have been there about a month, but the ones in the yard seemed to spring up out of nowhere after that rain we had. Unless they are something worth saving, I’d really like to eradicate them so the St. Augustine grass can continue to thrive and drive out the Bermuda grass. These flowers are only growing where the St. Augustine is thickest and the yard the shadiest, and it’s also the part of the yard that tends to get the most watering due to my efforts to have the Redbud survive this awful summer.

So, any ideas about what these things are? Like I said, they are pretty, and if they wanted to grow in the flowerbed, that would be cool. But if they are some kind of totally invasive species I will never be able to confine to the flowerbed, then I most definitely want to kill them without mercy.