Solved ID please, weed or not ?

Hi,

Found this unrecognised plant in two of our shadey borders, but not elsewhere ?

Have let a couple grow on like in the pictures below. but lots of smaller ones have been removed on the basis they looked like weeds.

For scale in the first picture the plant is about 30cm across and 20cm+ high.

 

Wood Avens ?

 

Geum urbanum
Or as autocorrect would have it grim urbanism

 

Its a bloody nightmare here.

 

They don't look too bad for weeds at first, but when you come to pull it up you find there are loads more hiding under other plants! Yours looks as if it hasn't spread great lengthy stems sideways. Yet.

 

I don't know which is worst in my garden: the docks, the Grim Urban, or the cleavers (which brings me out in a rash). I guess at least the Grim Urban doesn't have a great long tap root like the docks, so it's easy enough to pull up.

 

You don't want it if you grow tame geums. You can never trust a self seeder and you need to be certain where you've planted them.
Same with wild strawberries and potentilla
Willowherb tries the same trick too.

 

Thanks all, its strange that in all our years of gardening we have never known or been troubled by this plant. Live and learn !

 

We never planted it but as others have said it can be a nightmare. It is over all the garden and we have to keep digging it out to hopefully stop it spreading even more.