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This grew from a package of mixed wildflowers. I have no idea what it is, but it is approx 2 ft tall with soft velvety broad leaves. It had one tiny orange flower awhile back but I don't remember exactly what it looked like.

I'm at work and am blocked from seeing your images. But just guessing from what you said, I'm thinking the appropriately named velvetleaf:


https://www.illinoiswildflowers.info/wee ... _leaf1.jpg

I got mine from a mixed wildflower packet too. Everything else died out, but the velvetleaf keeps coming back. It is nice to have around because it is a good trap crop for leaf miners, which prefer those soft leaves to anything else. Just keep pulling the squiggly leaves off the velvetleaf and trashing them and it keeps your other stuff from being chewed.

Given half a chance it will get well more than 2 feet tall.

Did I guess right?

YEP! That's it! Thank you so much! It doesn't seem to flower very much. All I have had is the one tiny flower and all these "pods". Are they the seed pods by any chance?

Velvet leaf is generally considered a weed here in Ohio. Maybe it's seeds were inadvertently collected with the wildflower ones.

The pods are seed pods. Everywhere there is a pod, there was a flower at some point, but the flowers are sometimes kind of hidden.

Weed is in the eye of the beholder, but I know mine came from a wildflower seed packet too. Velvetleaf is not native, but in my yard, it is not an aggressive spreader. It self seeds and pops up in various places, but only one here and there. It does not spread by runners and the ones that pop up are easy to pull if they appear somewhere you don't want it. I also pull mine when they get too big and start shading other stuff out. But I make sure to let one or two go to seed, to have some for next year, because they work so well as a leaf miner trap.

Velvet leaf, aka. Button weed.
Unless you want an infestation, pull it or cut it.

well, conditions are different. But as I said above, in my yard, it never becomes an "infestation." It is not on the noxious weed list in my state or yours.

Illinoiswildflowers.info says of the velvetleaf: The seeds of Velvetleaf are reportedly edible. In an outdoor emergency, the soft leaves can be used as a substitute for toilet paper.

Incidentally on the Illinois noxious weed list is marijuana, cannabis sativa. It never occurred to me that would escape cultivation. "Weed" for sure.

Rainbowgardener, I guess our point of view is vastly different regarding weeds. I grew up on a farm and spent my summers cultivating or walking beans to rid the fields of the weeds that the cultivator couldn't get. I have seen button weed patches so thick that it took hours to cut them all. So our perceptions are different regarding this weed.

Just because it is not noxious doesn't mean this weed isn't a nuisance and can become a problem if left unchecked.

I wish that I had known that I could have ate the seeds when I was growing up. It could have provided me a snack as I was hacking them down.

This weed has become less of a problem since we spray Roundup now instead of walking.

Thanks for this ID. We see this stuff all over the place (empty lots, among wild weeds) here in the Midwest. Always wondered what it was, now I know!