A Weed or not a Weed? Cleome is a bit of Both

I had never met a Cleome, commonly known as a spider flower, until moving to Vera Cruz. As I delved into our overgrown flowerbeds during our first spring in our new home, the spindly, green plant was everywhere. The leggy, leafy foliage was so pervasive among the other greens that I recognized, that I assumed – quite wrongly it turns out – that this plant was a weed and started ripping it out with wild abandon.

Fast-forward a little bit to early summer when the one wayward Cleome that had some how made its way to our gravel driveway bloomed, showing off its unusual pink flower atop its even more unusual giraffe-like neck of green.

A bit of investigation and deductive reasoning determined that the “weed” I had so diligently wiped out and this lone flower were indeed of the same family tree. So, we diligently saved the seeds from this very persistent driveway offspring in the hopes of bringing the Cleome back to our garden the following summer.

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A friend who heard my Cleome lament also came to our aid, providing us with sees for white Cleome to go along with the pink seeds I had managed to save.

Somehow we also got our hands on purple Cleome seeds and we practically shouted out with glee.

The next summer, we peppered all of our flowerbeds with the Cleome seeds and we waited patiently. But the end of last summer our efforts were rewarded with a handful of Cleome plants that made it to the end of the growing season and tantilized us with their unique bobble-head-like blooms.

Things have sure changed this summer. If you know the Cleome (and, remember, we didn’t) my initial labeling of the odd little flower as a weed wasn’t that far off. Left unchecked, the Cleome does have the propensity to become invasive. If you don’t want the Cleome everywhere, you are supposed to remove it from your garden before it has the chance to drop its seeds. Who knew?

Well, things have come full circle in our yard now…and in our driveway…and in our flowerpots…and in the mounds of soil we turned over in creating our vegetable garden.

Welcome back Cleome. Oh how we missed you.