There’s a little square cut out of the sidewalk near the front porch that was intended to hold flowers. It’s had tomatoes, herbs and other things in it, and just now it is full of Aunt Lucy. I’ve never heard of Aunt Lucy until my garden app (Picture This) identified it as such.
Aunt Lucy (ellisia nyctelea), also known as false baby blue eyes, water weed, waterpod, and ellisia, is a wildflower that grows in woodlands. Or it’s a weed that grows in disturbed soil. Take your pick. I like the woodlands idea, but clearly my Aunt Lucy is a weed, growing where it wasn’t planted, taking over that bit of ground.
Aunt Lucy blooms in the spring and early summer. Its flowers are tiny, about a quarter-inch across. Their color ranges from blue to white and they’re shaped like a tube that opens up into five petals. They may have purple spots on the petals, or purple lines on the inside of the flower. Around the flower’s base is a green cup or calix that protects the flower. The flowers occur in singles rather than clusters, and only a few are open at a time during the day. They all close at night. The nectar of the flowers attracts a variety of pollinators, including mason bees, little carpenter bees, and bee flies. Syrphid flies feed on the pollen. One source reports that Aunt Lucy gives off an unpleasant odor if the leaves are crushed, and this discourages most mammals from chowing on it.
Aunt Lucy grows from a taproot, spreading and branching along the ground and reaching four to 16 inches upward. It will drop little seed capsules, containing four seeds each, later in the summer. It’s an annual plant, and if I leave it alone, it will no doubt come back next spring.
Aunt Lucy is native to North America and can be grown as far north as hardiness zone #4. My plant guide recommends Aunt Lucy for the brown-thumb gardener. It is resistant to pests, and very easy to grow.
Clinging like Velcro to my Aunt Lucy is another plant, this one a bit more unwelcome. It’s known as cleavers or catchweed bedstraw (Gallium aparine). This annoyance comes with many other names. It’s called cleavers because it has little hooked hairs that stick to anything they touch. It’s called stickweed, stick willy, catchweed and Velcro weed for the same reason. It’s also called goose grass and robin-run-the-hedge. Another name for it is bedstraw. Because it sticks to everything, including itself, it was used in earlier days to make mats for sleeping. It has also been used to make a sieve to strain milk.
Hairy & sprawling, with needle-like leaves growing radially from creeping stems, Catchweed Bedstraw overgrows the sidewalk next to the house. Author photo.
Whatever its uses, it wants to stick on everything. Its own stems are not strong enough to hold it upright, so it just climbs and sprawls over whatever it finds in its path. Its stems are soft and green and have those hooked hairs on the undersides. Stems are square and can grow to several feet long and branch widely. In the spring, it produces tiny white four-petaled flowers and up to 400 seeds per plant in early summer. The seeds are contained in capsules with more of those hooked hairs, so the seeds also stick to animal fur and other transports like my sweatshirt. Although it’s a completely different plant from beggar lice, it uses a similar plan to spread its seeds with the help of animals.
Catchweed bedstraw is thought to be native to North America although it is also found in Europe, Asia and Japan. It is related to the coffee plant, and the seeds are used in some places to make a coffee—like drink.
The gardening app I use also suggested that this was another plant for the brown-thumb gardener. I can’t imagine, though, why even a brown-thumb gardener like me would want to plant and nurture it.
Feature Photo by Author. Alt text: Low-growing Aunt Lucy has deeply lobed leaves and tiny flowers. This plant is about to be kicked out of its home to make way for a tomato.