Look what appeared in a landscape I’m working on after I weeded and planted a groundcover (Liriope) that will eventually fill in enough to prevent weeds. Mugwort seeds have sprouted vigorously thanks to all that supposedly maintenance-reducing activity on my part. Sigh.
From Wiki I learned that “Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) is a perfect example of a plant whose virtues are not as well understood as the menace it creates in a garden.” Oh, so it has virtues? Do continue.
It is native to Eurasia but has been naturalized in North America since the early settlers. Its perennial and spreading growth habit facilitated by extensive rhizomes make it a troublesome pest in gardens, and it is considered to be one of the worst weeds by the American nursery industry. Capable of tolerating low mowing heights, it can invade lawns as well as landscapes, roadsides and agronomic settings.
Wiki then offered this up as mugwort’s virtues: “As a beneficial plant, its aromatic leaves, stems and underground parts are considered to possess many medicinal attributes,” with a list of its uses as a tincture, essential oil, salve and so on.
But enough about herbal medicine! We’re gardeners here and we need to face the challenges that mugwort presents in our gardens.
Eek! It’s one of those “extensive rhizomes” that Wiki told us about!
So what’s a gardener to do?
A little research yielded this sad advice about “controlling” the stuff. From West Virginia Extension. (Emphasis added.)
Mechanical removal is often time-consuming and rather ineffective; studies have shown that rhizomes regenerated even after two years of routine mowing. Integrating the application of a systemic herbicide along with mechanical methods is known to be effective.
Directed spray of a non-selective herbicide, such as glyphosate, or an application of the same with a handheld weed wiper is effective in landscapes. Use a 3% to 4% solution of a concentrated glyphosate formulation (Roundup concentrate) or a 33% solution of the same when applied using a weed wiper…
When left unattended, mugwort can be a tough weed in the garden to battle.
Yeah, that’s what I was afraid of. Which leads to my next research project – what’s the least toxic herbicide that will work on it? 
Here’s another example of a rhizome from hell. (Or it can just go to hell. Either works.)
I’ll add that very few of the mugwort plants I dug up came with their roots fully attached like these example. Most of my weeding efforts left plenty of roots intact, to grow and thrive another day.
My weed of choice? Crabgrass!
So it may shock you but I’m declaring it, anyway: I’d trade the scourge of mugwort for any amount of crabgrass instead, happily! Though crabgrass has truly impressive abilities to cover ground, its roots are quite superficial. They’re so easy to pull – completely! – that it’s actually a pleasure to deal with them.
(Okay, not a pleasure I recommend to friends or put high on my list of weekend fun but if you’re an obsessive gardener like me, you probably get it.)
Gardeners, what are your most and least favorite weeds to pull? Or go crazy trying to rid your garden of, anyway. Coz the joke’s on us, right?
Hi …well glad you asked……fave weed to pull is Japanese stilt grass…but it may also be the worst most invasive weed around here….except…well I do have centipede grass which, if you do not kill it with herbicide and you pull it instead?? You are actually multiplying it…(every time you pull it out if you don’t get the whole dang root and all) Some areas in my beds were so bad with the centipede grass that I had to dig ALL of my perennials , put them in pots, and then round-up the entire length of the bed 3.5’x 40’. Only then was I able to kill it…..
You asked what my rant worthy weed would be — sedge. It creeps, has rhizomes, seems to be impervious to chemical weed killers, showed up uninvited about 10 yrs ago in one small bed. Now is just about everywhere! Removed every plant from the bed; dug up the soil down to about 8” -10”; replaced soil; washed roots and replanted. Two years later it is rampant in the flowerbed! Maybe solarizing will bring me victory? Trying it.
The English have such interestingly descriptive names. I beat nutsedge, spearmint (wanted to keep some), it’s wild onion that I can’t get rid of. It got away from me because I thought the drumstick alium was spreading nicely.
My son in law says I like to weed.
Agree with Susan that common mugwort is the most difficult weed to control in the garden. A “friend” gave me a pot of “Green and Gold variegated Artemisia” approximately 20 years ago. I planted it on a steep hillside along with Ecinops, Monarda, and other sun loving perennials. It was lovely and well behaved for approximately three years. Soon after that, the plant lost its interesting variegation and reverted to plain old common mugwort. It morphed into a monster that rapidly spread throughout the hillside. Hand-pulling is only a temporary measure. (We prefer not to use chemical herbicides)
Don’t EVER let this plant flower or it will self-seed everywhere! We learned this after a long vacation when we missed the opportunity to weed-wack the plant into submission. I spent three days this August pulling out mugwort from part of our hillside (an area about 8’x15’) digging down a foot, then screening the soil to remove bits of roots. That was only one third of the area that requires removal. I now monitor this area daily.
Note: Another friend who is an herbalist harvested some of the remaining mugwort to dry for tea, stuff sleep pillows, and use as smudge sticks.
In order of my dismay: 1st place bindweed 2nd place yaupon sprouts, 3rd place dogwood sprouts, 4th place Bermuda grass, with dishonorable mention bestowed on nutsedge.
I absolutely hated tradescantia – the way it can survive even under the dense light-blocking blanket of its own smothering growth is particularly objectionable – but now I have chickens and tradescantia no longer bothers me.
However, I still have rampant quantities of buttercup, inedible mint, and convolvulus infesting my garden – none of which are my chooks prepared to eat.
Oddly enough, my worst “weeds” are plants I introduced: yucca, trumpet vine, spearmint, etc.
I’m never sure whether these unrecognisable plants you have are from another planet or if it’s just the common names which bewilder me. The effect is pretty magical though – in the UK we don’t seem to have many of your weeds! (We probably actually do, under different names and we probably even donated them to you).
Well, mine is cleavers, variously known, according to Wikipedia, as Galium aparine: known by a variety of common names in English. They include hitchhikers, cleavers,[2] clivers, bedstraw, (small) goosegrass (not to be confused with other plants known as goosegrass),[2] catchweed,[2] stickyweed, sticky bob,[3] stickybud, stickyback, sticky molly, robin-run-the-hedge, sticky willy,[2][4] sticky willow, stickyjack, stickeljack, grip grass, sticky grass, bobby buttons, whippysticks, and velcro plant.[5].
Velcro plant must be a very ancient name….
I think your list is magical too! And all of that is the same plant?! You could call different patches of it by different names. Then see how much you can confuse your visitors.
Nice idea. We have been known to give visitors bags to collect it in and, bless them, they’ve brought them back full…..
Anne Wareham’s reply was hilarious! All we can dream is that these “weed’s” will suddenly become the cure for cancer and we can make our millions harvesting them and buy everything in the Kinsman catalog… haahah one can dream….
Oh gosh. Chameleon plant was my worst (I got it with free plants from a friend) but I eventually ran the whole area of soil 12″ deep through a sieve and got it. Now: wire grass (I think I made up that common name), wisteria, english ivy, autumn olive, chinese privet, japense honeysuckle, then lastly japanese stiltgrass.
Wisteria is HATE HATE HATE.
Mine would be galinsoga. It’s also called quick weed for a reason. If you don’t catch it early, it will take over your whole bed. Nutsedge is a close second.
Mugwort is right up there for me. Along with houttinya and garlic mustard.
Mine is Creeping Charlie – Glechoma hederacea. Also known as ground ivy, creeping jenny and gill-over-the-ground.
Creeping Charlie is beyond creepy covers Ivy and hostas and climbs up into the forsythia & azaleas.
#EVIL https://plants.ces.ncsu.edu/plants/houttuynia-cordata/
Someone gave me a little pot of this obviously she must’ve been an enemy three years and gallons of round up later
A couple of years ago I read an article by someone who – seriously – suggested allowing creeping charlie to take over your lawn so as not to have to mow or apply fertilizer. (I think she hated all gardeners in general.)
Creeping Charlie (aka alehoof) was brought to North America by English colonists as an herb to help clarify and preserve ale. It’s also used as a vegan replacement for whey in cheese making.
Creeping Charlie has overtaken the shady part of our lower backyard. We leave it alone. The purple flowers are beloved by bees and the deer tend to avoid it, probably because of its unique odor. Turf grasses don’t grow well in shade. Our shady mixed “lawn” of violets, native strawberries, and Creeping Charlie remain green all summer without supplemental watering and it looks like grass from the house. It’s easy to remove from our perennial beds while mugwort is not.
My neighbor has a back yard full of Creeping Charlie. With permission
I grabbed weeds by her fence in order to prevent them from entering my yard. I wore gloves. But the fumes, given an hour’s exposure were enough to give me insomnia.
It is my worst weed to. I am slowly getting rid of it.
My honey helped out a farmer the year we were redoing some flowerbeds. Our soul is mostly rocks and clay, so he asked for some “field dirt” as pay, meaning dirt from a field cows were kept in so it would be enriched. All was good at first, but along with it came creeping butter cups that are trying to take over the world! It’s a real problem in the bed full of perennial geraniums because the leaves are so similar. Yanking, digging, it doesn’t matter, I’ll never be rid of it.
I actually enjoy pulling dandelions though. I love them! I tell them that I’ll find them a new home if they come up nice and easy and I swear it works.
Dollar weed or pennywort (Hydrocotyle spp.) is impossible to get rid of in the coastal Alabama (Fairhope) where our rainfall averages more than 60 inches a year. Dollar weed spreads by rhizomes and seeds. I have had rhizomes reappear at edge of 10 feet of heavy mulch. You can find the white rhizome under all the mulch. Dollar weed loves moisture and we do have plenty of it here.
weed is a perjorative term in the botanical world. Its a rotten shame that we have to use environmental poisons in order to have preferred plants. I have no plants called weeds in my yard.
I started making a list of what one might call native weeds AND the critters they support. Strangely for me, Liriope is the plant that I want to eliminate. Mugwort came in with purchased plants, but I quickly removed it. Still struggling with stilt grass and sometimes Youngia Japonica. I think our geographical locations and amount of rain color our perceptions.
I have heard that one way mugwort may enter our gardens is in the soil of new plants we have put in the ground. The stories told here are certainly cautionary tales that should prompt us to look closely at any new suspicious plant growth after we have introduced new plants. Best wishes for progress to all who battle mugwort.
The nice thing about drought (there is one nice thing) is that the weeds are scarce. Here several types of Oxalis–pes-caprae and corniculata–are pestilential. Spotted spurge (Euphorbia maculata) is a scourge of summer and fall, though it is tap-rooted–a delicate, flimsy tap root–and easy to pull. Bad is that it can drop several thousand seeds that will all germinate next summer very quickly.
Firstly, I absolutely hate Chamberbitter(aka gripeweed). It is very prolific growing any and everywhere. It grows in the flowerbeds, in the lawn,and in the cracks in the road and sidewalk. It spreads by the hundreds of seeds that develop on the undersides of the branches.
Secondly, I hate Virginia buttonweed. It also
is extremely prolific and has multiple ways to reproduce, including heavy seed production that occurs both above and below the ground from self-pollinating flowers, rooting stem fragments and tap roots that allow plants to survive through winter.
Bishopweed, field bindweed, Asiatic bittersweet, English ivy, Wintercreeper, burning bush, callery pear, garlic mustard, burdock, curly dock, bush honeysuckle, spotted knapweed, japanese honeysuckle, pokeweed, wingstem, Indian strawberry, gill over the ground take up most of my time. Presistance and thickly covering with plants I want (mostly native) keeps them at bay. I try to spend my time keeping them from going to seed and then rooting out.
Chamberbitter, Phyllanthus urinaria, and Mulberry weed, Fatoua villosa.
Crown vetch…came into our perennial display garden from a group doing “Community service” and spread “mulch from our town “composted” yard waste. The roots are impossible to entirely dig out as they trail and intertwine…the reason it is planted on roadside slopes to prevent erosion.
Mugwort doesn’t bother me so much. It is easy to pull when the ground is moist and gets chucked into the weed bucket to go to the chickens. Price of chicken feed is going up and up and it is a good free addition to their diet.
Gout weed for sure. Hard to believe it’s still sold at nurseries (as ‘Snow on the mountain). Sold as a very pretty green and white leaf ‘that will grow, even in difficult areas’. Then seeds itself into a solid green monster that is impossible to get rid of! Unfortunately, I inherited gout weed when I bought my house. (Always beware of plants marketed as ‘ will grow anywhere’!)
My #1 enemy-weed is poison ivy because I keep finding new plants popping up continually, in every part of the property plus between pavers on the patio, walkways, etc. And of course in what passes for ‘lawn’ here, which means the seedlings get stepped on, and the urushiol is transferred to the soles of shoes, etc. Hence, no outdoor shoes allowed inside our house. Anyway, there is no identifiable ‘mother plant’ anywhere on our property or visible in adjacent neighbors’, so it has been a constant battle from April through November for the past 8 years – and will never end.
A very close #2 is Japanese stiltgrass, first spotted here three years ago and has spread throughout lawn and beds. The only selective herbicide that works on it is Acclaim, btw. And do not pull it before July (according to NYS Invasive Species info) or before August (according to Rutgers) because doing so will encourage the hundreds of seeds in the “seed bank” soil area to germinate. Mowed stiltgrass will form seed at ground level rather than atop tillers. The seed is easily spread by mowers, shoes, and garden tools, so it’s easy to get re-infested from elsewhere even if you initially get rid of it.
Former owners of our property stupidly planted Houttonyia (Chameleon plant) and after 7 years of systemic eradication I still find it popping up here and there.
However, I would gladly accept all the dozens of weed species that I battle every year (including nutsedge, Creeping Charlie, dandelions and all the rest) for the opportunity to return to those glorious decades of poison-ivy-free gardening at previous gardens. IMHO there is no weed (or plant) worse. (Thankfully, we do not have poison oak in my region.)
Geeeze Louize! I did not know all those “extras” about Japanese stilt grass….yup I am evil…I use roundup and it works and still pull it up (so easy!) but did not know I was encouraging more…i read that if you pull it up or spray it before it seeds you can sometimes get ahead of it (its an annual) but yes I also read that the seeds are viable for up to 5 years. Damn it all to hell…..even the deer walking thru it..and thru my front yard, are spreading it….ugh…..
New this year to me are the numerous ‘Rattlesnake Master’ seedlings from two mature plants I bought 3 years ago. Obviously they’ve been so happy here that they produced so many seedlings that it has become overwhelming for me to “edit”. Although prized as Native plant, it has come to the point that I almost want to pull everything out ( deep tap roots makes it very hard to get the whole plant out, even as young seedling). The other annoying thing is that when I tried to research ways on how to get rid of the excess seedlings, I cannot find anything online ( everything online is in praise on how to grow more of them) or even from my local extension office. So help if everyone has experience/ideas on this!
Generally, if it’s green, holds down soil, and it’s not poison ivy or ragweed, it’s welcome in our yard. I figure it’s my job to establish a more successful plant for the location if I want it to take over from the “weeds.” Of course, it helps that we live in a place where the traditional yard was, historically, sand with weeds and possibly some grass, kept mown to a respectable height (the “Cape Cod lawn”). I have some persistent “weeds” with vines or rhizomes that flourish anywhere that I disturb the soil (e.g., plant something) and don’t cover it well with mulch. After a few years of battling them, I’ve settled on coexisting rather than attempting eradication.
Thank you all so much, commenters!!! Your stories are fascinating, some horrifying, and all of them make me feel better. Struggles with mugwort doesn’t look so bad now.
A footnote on the subject which I’ve just come across in another recent email.
Upon the mugwort
The dew falls, scattered
On an autumn night;
Sleeping alone, my
Sleeves are drenched, indeed!
A Japanese waka from October 893
My worst weed used to be Bermuda grass. Then it was trumpet vine. Yes, I still battle those, and truly wish Bermuda grass had never, ever been brought to the U.S., but currently the absolute worst weed in my yard now is Ruellia nudiflora. Mexican petunia. Yes it has beautiful blue flowers. Yes, I think it’s native, but I’m not clear on that. Yes, it is impossible to get rid of. It’s cousin, Ruellia brittoniana, also aka Mexican Petunia, isn’t any better, but at least it’s not taking over my yard because I never bought any. (It’s actually sold in some nurseries!) Ruellia has deep roots that resemble daylily roots. You can’t pull it out. It can be dug out, but with my hard clay soil that’s not so easy. And even as you struggle to dig out every last bit of root, which is impossible, its seedlings are just laughing at you while you sweat. You see, when it goes to seed and the seed pod gets wet, it explodes and sends the seeds everywhere. I try not to let it go to seed, but with it taking over faster than I can keep up, it’s a lost cause. Somehow, the trumpet vine that sends up new vines 20 feet away from the parent plant, and actually tries to grow into my house, doesn’t seem so bad anymore. I can at least enjoy the hummingbirds and bees as they visit the flowers in the summer.
YES YES!! I worry…oy vey…..does anyone here admit to using Round-up? …I hope I don’t get put into “gardener’s prison” for it but it works!!! I also planted some mexican petunia and boy oh boy did it spread!! My lawn guy warned….oh. I have people who hate that stuff…and at first I was like …”OH? It is so pretty tho!” …..Everything she says is true……I ended up spraying the plant and all around it and just decided if the poison killed some plant that I wanted I would go buy another one….that is how militant I was about it ..honeysuckle is a bad one too (actually any vine whatsoever!! Including wisteria!) just ask me (ohh ohhh pick me pick me hahaha) but there is also Passion flower vine I will never get rid of it…ugh…everytime I read a reply to the original post I nod and say ..”yes Yes that one too …”…..I live in north Atlanta area and have every noxious weed known to woman or man…….
I don’t use RoundUp but I do use two versions of something else. For “normal” weeds/grass killing, I buy the herbicide version of Spectracide concentrate which is a mixture of Diquat, Fluazifop, and Dicamba, at a ratio of 6 oz/gal which is stronger than the off-the-shelf version. However, for woody invasives and weeds from h*ll, I mix up what I call my Nuclear Option. It’s 4 oz of Bayer Brush Killer Plus (which is Triclopyr) + 2 oz of the Spectracide, per gallon. I have yet to find something that this won’t kill. It works on poison ivy, Houttonyia, goutweed, wild blackberry, multiflora rose, bittersweet, you name it. After experimenting with different products and combinations of products for several seasons, I discovered that the addition of the Spectracide was the magic bullet; it knocks back the green growth quickly which allows the Triclopyr to really get at the root systems of the stubborn stuff such as the goutweed/bishop’s weed and the Houttonyia.