Plant ID please

[walkin jack]

W
What IS this?

 

[mrchick]

Could be a weed called wild lettuce.

 

[soFlaNative]

Could be a weed called wild lettuce.

Reminds me of ragweed but it's not. It does have the leaves of prickly lettuce.
Glad it's not in my yard.

 

[NFrameFred]

It's a weed, man . . . . . . . . .

 

[walkin jack]

It's a weed, man . . . . . . . . .

Well, Google says it's edible but it is a weed to me.

 

[walnutred]

NOT wild lettuce. That is in the mint family and has square stims.

 

[glenwolde]

Not the ganja. Some kind of not fun weed. google photo-search a pic of a leaf.

 

[Rustyt1953]

I know what it's not.

 

[TXBryan]

Difficult to determine from the photo but my vote is a type of prickly lettuce and yes prickly lettuce is a close relative of commercially grown lettuce. And it is edible but you want it considerably younger, and smaller, than this specimen.

Don't mean to be a butt-head but I actually have an earned PhD in weed science (NCSU 1986). You can get a PhD in just about anything! But in all candor, taxonomy through photos has never been a particular strength of mine. I am in error about things several times a day.

Bryan

 

[crazyphil]

It looks to me like what they call kudzu in the South.
I see you are in Texas, so maybe it is moving West.

 

[Narragansett]

Weedus Humongous.

Buy edible weeds in store

 

[Gamecock]

Woody or herbaceous stem?

How tall?

 

[jeffrefrig]

I have a bunch growing around here. I thought they were from seeds mistakenly thrown by my fence by, uh, the neighbor kids, yeah, but they’re just useless weeds. I mean useless, I heard.

 

[jeffrefrig]

Just useless plants. They make oxygen. So that’s good.

 

[NFrameFred]

Not the ganja. Some kind of not fun weed. google photo-search a pic of a leaf.

Well . . . . to be honest I didn't say it was 'weed' . . . I just said it's 'A' weed . . .

 

[TXBryan]

The Real McCoy - sort of

Here's a pic of hemp in a Texas AgriLife (extension service) variety trial from last summer. We're trying to find a variety adapted to Texas conditions that yields decent fiber. It turns out it's a bit of a task. And no; I'm not that kind of weed scientist.

Several posts referred to "useless" plants and that is pretty close to the actual, working, definition of what constitutes a weed. It's all based on anthropomorphism (people-orientation).

A weed is a plant for which an economic use has yet to be identified, or a plant growing "out-of-place." Hence prickly lettuce is a non-economically important plant and therefore a weed. And so is a corn plant growing in a field planted to soybeans.

 

[charlie sherrill]

It looks to me like what they call kudzu in the South.
I see you are in Texas, so maybe it is moving West.

Kudzu is a vine. The only way to kill it is to pull it out of the ground.

 

[Heinz]

It is not kudzu. Kudzu has a vining habit and a bit more oval leaf than that, At least the Kudzu in SC does.