This volunteer plant with interesting flowers

I feel like I should recognize this, either as a weed or a plant. It has some interesting multi-colored flowers. And of course it's growing more robustly than anything else in the garden :

Looks like it might be a mint, is it? If so, it will definitely grow robustly, and grow and grow and grow and....

OhioGardener wrote:Looks like it might be a mint, is it?

Yes, now that you mention it, must be "a mint". Square stems, alternate leaf pattern. Now which one?

It's every so lightly hairy. I broke off a piece and it has a slight odor that I can't place. More floral than minty, perhaps.

Mints are known to hybridize, so I suppose it could be it's own thing.

If it wants to take over the front boxes, it's welcome! I did something wrong with the mix that I threw together at the start of Covid. Possibly it's the commercial compost I added. Maybe it had the bad kind of weed killer (the kind that persists in the soil). Or maybe there's not enough light. So, for instance my walking onions are now the walking dead onions.

So I'm trying to water it, add compost, and hope it works itself out. So I've been trying to find crops, covers, or flowers that will thrive. It turns out that lemon grass is happy there given enough water. I tried buckwheat but it was only so-so. The mint is welcome but I imagine it's only a matter of weeks before it dries up as the days get shorter.

markqz wrote:If it wants to take over the front boxes, it's welcome! I did something wrong with the mix that I threw together at the start of Covid. Possibly it's the commercial compost I added. Maybe it had the bad kind of weed killer (the kind that persists in the soil). Or maybe there's not enough light. So, for instance my walking onions are now the walking dead onions.

So I'm trying to water it, add compost, and hope it works itself out. So I've been trying to find crops, covers, or flowers that will thrive. It turns out that lemon grass is happy there given enough water. I tried buckwheat but it was only so-so. The mint is welcome but I imagine it's only a matter of weeks before it dries up as the days get shorter.

If it was some bad compost with the Grazon herbicide in it, plant a "grass" seed, such as cereal rye (Winter Rye), or oats. The grass crops not only thrive in the Grazon herbicide, but they gradually dissipate the herbicide.

I feel like I have been introduced to this plant, and it didn't have a good story.

. . .of course it's growing more robustly than anything else in the garden. .

Of course it is.

This looks like Lantana to me. In GA it grows vigorously. It is seeded by birds and can be beautiful. I don’t think I want it in my garden since it can grow to 6 feet in height and width, although that will take a while.

Oregonrain wrote:This looks like Lantana to me. In GA it grows vigorously. It is seeded by birds and can be beautiful. I don’t think I want it in my garden since it can grow to 6 feet in height and width, although that will take a while.

Love my Lantana's.  So do the butterflies.

Does lantana have a slight floral smell to the leaves?

I've only seen lantana when it was a shrub, not when it's young.

I like lantana, but when my child was young my spouse was obsessed when getting rid of it since it was poisonous. I did my research and discovered that no actual people have ever been poisoned by it -- only cattle. You have to eat 10% of your body weight in lantana for it be poisonous!

I'm kind of leaning towards the plant being a somewhat stunted Bee Balm. Does that seem at all a possibility?

Ok, after looking at some more pictures, I think OregonRain is right -- It's lantana.

markqz wrote:I'm kind of leaning towards the plant being a somewhat stunted Bee Balm. Does that seem at all a possibility?

It could be, but my Bee Balm has a more pointed leaf than the one you showed.  This is a picture of my Bee Balm in the spring when it was still small. Note the thinner, pointed leaves.