Persicaria Perfoliata.

Persicaria Perfoliata.

I know it. You know it. We all know it. Anyone who has ever spent a day working out in that one patch of hedgerow that you swear, every year, you’re going to get to, and sometimes you even do -- you head out with your clippers and your wheelbarrow and your gloves, your sleeves and your pants long in the summer heat, knowing that you are bound for heat rash and sweaty shirts and maybe, eventually, a break in the shade when the sun moves behind the trees…

Persicaria Perfoliata.

Gardening is fun. We like gardening. Pulling up weeds and planting new things and hauling out the blackberries and the overgrown grass and the dead branches and the poison ivy and the PERSICARIA.

If ever anything could force you to give up and turn that one patch of your hedgerow over to the forces of nature, exclaiming “fine! I give up! You can have it!” -- it’s persicaria perfoliata, the gardener’s bane.

Persicaria Perfoliata.

Persicaria…

…perfoliata.