I've had this plant for going on four years now. It's survived hail, excess water, snow, heat, everything. It dies off in winter to just a stem, then the leaves come back. This is as tall as it gets (about 8 inches) and it never flowers. I've had it in partial shade, complete shade, and this year, complete sun (8 hours). I may - MAY - have bought it as a yellow lilac years ago from Publisher's Clearing House and maybe that's what they actually shipped me. Who knows? But this plant did arrive with another plant planted right next to it and that turned out to be a butterfly weed which looked totally different and which I planted in my garden bed. That has since grown and bloomed. Meantime, if anyone knows what it really is, I'd be grateful. This picture was taken in the spring. Please ignore all the weeds around the pot. I have those (mostly) gone now. For a better size reference, that's a half barrel next to it.
Oh boy the leaves in the pot growing is a tricky thing to try to ID. For me a pic of just a few leaves is like trying to ID the age of someone from a picture of a just toe. Maybe someone else can help. Good Luck.
I was afraid of that but the plant never grows any taller. I'd toss it, but I keep hoping it will flower some day. This is a spring picture of it. I have another shot of it in my other thread here "Junipers or cedar trees?" It's not as clear, but the leaves have gotten larger.
Like Pac said, no telling what it could be. What I would do is plant it in the yard. Take a look at the roots and see what you have in that pot. It might be that once it can spread it's roots out, it'll grow and then, if it does flower we can have a better chance at IDing it.
Uh, you haven't seen my yard. Where I live, the original "soil", and I use that word lightly, is nothing but rocks with a little dirt sprinkled over and between them. I've made my garden beds by pouring top soil and potting soil over the rocks, using about 6 to 8 bags a year for the last four years (my garden beds are a total of maybe 40 to 50 feet long and about a foot wide). The soil is still only a couple inches deep and once you go past the soil, there's only rock and more rock underneath. Most plants I have would do much better in a pot than in the so-called garden beds I have. And my yard is even worse. I hired a contractor to do my yard last year and he only put down 2" of top soil, which has now filtered down and left - what else - rock, and then he screwed up the kind of seed I wanted for both areas of my yard. So I can't even plant anything out there right now.
@rodentraiser Mmm what type of rodents do you raise. Could be similarly sized,shaped like several of mine. For instance… moles, voles, ground squirrels, pocket gophers and lets also add the soil dwelling rain beetles and the newest to the list are the red jumping worms which changes the soil structure impacting the plants ability to grow. The soil here was all hard pan clay even the front loader on my tractor couldn’t get thru it with out a good flood of water to soften the clay soil. I stopped trying to amend the soil after a year … now all my gardens are made up of mushroom compost and topsoil , lots of it. Literally huge dump truck loads that I have raked down and created raise garden bed’s 10-12” deep after it has leveled off a few weeks after delivery. This technique is well known in many gardens across the region that have unruly dirt not soil. Now it’s loaded with lots of great plants planted over several years ….but… has not stopped the ground critters. I use special traps for pocket gophers, special traps for moles and sometimes I can coral a mole and drown the lil bugger out and pop it with a sharp shovel. One of my fav get even methods for creating havoc in my garden. Then of course it’s an unending torture battle for me thruout the year to maintain control of the rodents I have been feeding for years. Recently I have come to terms with raising any more rodents and just maintained the plants that don’t attract these rodents. I still snag them in all the many menagerie of traps I have acquired over the years. And of course a good cat or 2 is a big help… and that is a whole other story for another time.
OMG - what I wouldn't give for clay! When I lived in south San Jose in California, my whole yard was nothing but clay. You went out in the rain to plant things because that was the only time you could dig in the soil. But boy, did it ever grow things! I used to dig a hole, throw in a handful of peat moss, and up, up, up, and away we went. Shasta daisies, snapdragons, roses, geraniums, ting tings, cherry tomatoes (that went crazy), strawberries, corn, watermelons, grapevines, a wisteria plant, clump bamboo, marigolds, and especially California poppies. I lived on a horse boarding stable in an old trailer and there was a raised walkway to the trailer steps. I went out and (I know now it's illegal to do this) picked a ton of wild California poppies out in one of the pastures one spring. I planted them on either side of the walkway. In two years, they were so thick, it was like walking through a meadow of them to get to my trailer door. I sure miss California. You could start planting in March, harvest in June, replant in July, and harvest again in October. Anyhoo, I don't actually have any critters up here where I live in the PNW that seem to go after anything except the deer. When I first moved in here, I had chipmunks, rabbits, red squirrels, and raccoons. The raccoons have so far done minimal damage - all the babies did was pull down one corn stalk so far. The rabbits and chipmunks all disappeared after my cat moved in. I know there's still red squirrels in the trees because I hear them, but I don't see them that often. I haven't ever seen any moles, voles, or gophers or ground squirrels. We do have rats, but I've never seen a live one. So far all I've seen are four dead ones, courtesy of the cat. However, we do have hawks, owls, eagles, bobcats, coyotes, bear, and cougars up here. I have no doubt they're taking their share of the rodents. I call myself rodentraiser because I raised mice for show and pets for about 8 years in the 90s. Most people that raise mice for show keep them in a mousery, but I made pets out of mine and I just got tired of getting attached to them and having them die when they were only a year or so old. They just don't live that long. So I quit raising them. This is the soil up here with nothing on it, except for weeds.
