Mystery Plant ID

[jinman]

I'm hoping some of the TBN brain-trust plant experts will be able to help me with identifying a plant. It's in a flowerbed where I planted all kinds of different flowers. When it first came up, I thought it was a flower I had planted, but I'm beginning to think otherwise. The reason is that the same plant turned up in my garden almost 400 feet from where this flowerbed is located. When the plants were young, the deer ate most of them, so I put deer netting over the flowerbed and now the plant has grown to maturity. It's really a mystery to me since the plant has a few tiny bell-shaped flowers about 3/8" in diameter and seedpods that look like tiny Japanese lanterns about 1" in diameter. I will post the photos to the LBJ Wildflower Center website if I don't find someone here who knows what it is, but I'm hoping the TBN crowd comes through with a defintive ID for my plant. Aggiehortguy. . .are you out there?

In the first picture, the large white bloom is not on the mystery plant, it's a zinnia. I posted these photos in 1024x768 resolution to give the most detail. My apologies to anyone without high speed broadband.

 

[jimmyj]

Is it a chinese lantern plant? Physalis alkekengi
Chinese Lantern - Physalis alkekengi

 

[jinman]

Jim, I think you might be right. I'm going to watch to see if the "lanterns" turn red. I'm sure it is something of the genus Physalis, but it seems to be closer to the longleaf ground cherry or dwarf ground cherry. I typed in "lantern plant" into Google and it helped me find at least the genus of the plant right after I posted this. If we aren't 100% correct, at least we are "hot on the trail." Thanks for your help.

The seedpod inside the "lantern" is marble-sized and seems to be rolling around. There are lots more details to be discovered about this plant. Have you had experience with this plant before? It's a first for me. I'm just thinking it may have been included in the seeds I bought at Walmart. I think I bought about 20 packs of their cheap seeds to sow into this flowerbed. There's no telling what I may have planted. I'm sure I've pulled some flowers because I thought they were weeds.

 

[jimmyj]

From your description of the seed pod inside I think we're right. These babies are pretty nice to look at but they spread really bad. Almost a nuisance like mint can be.

We get them in our garden (veggie) because we have them in the flower gardend and I think the birds must spread seeds.

You have a lot more land than we do but I kind of like it when flowers naturalize, of course as long as I'm not spreading an invasive.

 

[jinman]

The place the plant is coming up in my garden is right where I have herbs growing. I bought the herb seed and flower seed from Walmart's $0.20 per pack rack. I'll bet you there were some seeds mixed in with the herbs and flowers. I only have 1 plant in my garden, but there have been about a dozen of them in the flowerbed. I've pulled several because they grow quickly and overpower the flowers I want.