I had lots of topsoil delivered for the makeover and have had a few suprises:-)

Definitely a surprise. If I had seen it without the flower I would have said a tomato, but obviously not. Don't know.

The leaves look a bit "thistle-like" but the budding flower looks too large....hmm....definitely a mystery there, BA.

Sorry.

As a seedling, I thought it was a welsh poppy of which I had many:-) Do you think Fractal would know?

Leaves remind me of Knapweed, but the flower spike's all wrong - might be easier to identify when the flower spikes show a bit of colour - or not!

It's not a British native I recognise. Looks as though the flower will be little more than what's there, small, but massed up the stem. Any smell to the leaf? Phil J

I'll have a sniff later Philjeffs and get back to you. I really do have a mystery plant Bamboo, how exciting:-) Are you on the edge of yopur seats Bulba and Wlass?? I have a feeling they will be purple...we could have a little bet on here. What's your guess??

Just looked in on this! It looks like Ambrosia, in fact it is. Because they are among the few members of the daisy family (along with Artemisia and a few others) to have abandoned insect pollination in favour of wind pollination, their flowers don't look like a typical daisy of course. Most of them are annuals (like this one) but a few in the USA are also shrubs. Their nearest "typical daisy" relatives are believe it or not, the genus Helianthus!

Ambrosia artemisiifolia to be exact....

In America they are referred to as Ragweeds and are quite troublesome to hay fever sufferers, especially those allergic to their pollen which is released from the male flowers at the top of the stems. The female flowers occur lower down the stems.

Fractal has cracked the case...good info too. Looks like a purple flower forming there to me, BA...lol

Because I am interested in unusual adaptations in nature I did a personal study of this genus along with the (relatively) unrelated daisy genus Artemisia which belong to the Anthemis/Chrysanthemum section of the daisy family. They also seem to be heading in a similar insect free pollianation direction.

I just did a search on GOY and saw an earlier reply in 2009 by Fractal and he gave a weblink...might be helpful to take a look.

http://wisplants.uwsp.edu/scripts/detail.asp?SpCode=AMBART

There are also more mature plant photos as well that were noted on the GOY search....they grow and spread quite nicely from what I saw on the photo.

It has very attractive foliage but the wind pollinated flowers though of botanical interest are not showy I must say. Enjoy it for its leaves.

Wow!!!! I feel like a Goddess, wish you hadn't mentioned the ragweed though, prefer ambrosia;-)))))) I'll follow your link Wlass:-) I've looked, now I'm going to look at Fractal's earlier answer:-)

How long do I have from flowers opening to pollination? I don't want to cause asthma problems locally lol.. Looks like I must have lost my bet on purple flowers though:-(