Help ID local weeds...

Hello all. Trying to familiarize myself with local weeds that could be beneficial to my garden and landscape. I live in the Birmingham area and took a few pics of some flowering weeds that are growing around here. Any help would be appreciated.

One more...

Trey Robbins wrote:One more...

That kind of looks like smart weed AKA Polygonum.

You're right. It looks very similar, but I'm not quite sure what any of these are or even how to begin to research them...

The third photo looks like some kind of convolvulus.
Maybe a field bindweed?
In my experience, basically anything from this family are a menace...

The first two are guesses, I can't see the leaves very well.
photo one.....maybe bitter weed...grows in all of the pastures in my area.
photo two...maybe flea bane....pastures also, prolific here this year.
photo three....something in the morning glory family.
photo four....this one I am certain is smart weed. Of all four of these this is the one I find beneficial. I have been letting it grow up in areas to out compete grasses, especially bermuda and it is not bad as a chop and drop mulch...and I think the 'flowers' are cute, always have

i think the first one is dyer's chamomile, a perennial chamomile. although its hard to tell in that photo.
the second one almost looks like chamomile too, but not quite, theres a lot of plants with flowers like that.

the third is morning glory. it looks like one that grows in the south.

ah then again maybe judith browning is right -bitter weed

Leila Rich wrote:The third photo looks like some kind of convolvulus.
Maybe a field bindweed?
In my experience, basically anything from this family are a menace...

I take that sweeping generalisation back!
We have an endemic convolvulus that just sunbathes quietly above the high tide line
and there's bound to be other nice, polite convolvulus out there

Great replies everyone! I will try to take closer pictures of the individual leaves today for better help

Leila Rich wrote:

Leila Rich wrote:The third photo looks like some kind of convolvulus.
Maybe a field bindweed?
In my experience, basically anything from this family are a menace...

I take that sweeping generalisation back!
We have an endemic convolvulus that just sunbathes quietly above the high tide line
and there's bound to be other nice, polite convolvulus out there

i dont like them personally. they make my very short enemy plant list, i hate to use the invasive word, but they really are. i think like bindweed they have roots that go down really deep, like 30 feet deep once it digs in. thats why they are so impossible to get rid of....i know of no god uses for them at all.

Judith Browning wrote:The first two are guesses, I can't see the leaves very well.
photo one.....maybe bitter weed...grows in all of the pastures in my area.
photo two...maybe flea bane....pastures also, prolific here this year.
photo three....something in the morning glory family.
photo four....this one I am certain is smart weed.  Of all four of these this is the one I find beneficial.  I have been letting it grow up in areas to out compete grasses, especially bermuda and it is not bad as a chop and drop mulch...and I think the 'flowers' are cute, always have:)

Judith, do you find the bitterweed to be a problem?  Do your animals eat it?  

I've found doing an image match really helpful, especially if using the "Exact Match" choice.  If that doesn't work, try the other options. This way I was able to ID Zaluzianska divaricate when my local weed book failed.  

I hope the original poster from 2014 figured it all out and was able to get an ID for all of them.

Beau M. Davidson wrote:

Judith Browning wrote:The first two are guesses, I can't see the leaves very well.
photo one.....maybe bitter weed...grows in all of the pastures in my area.
photo two...maybe flea bane....pastures also, prolific here this year.
photo three....something in the morning glory family.
photo four....this one I am certain is smart weed.  Of all four of these this is the one I find beneficial.  I have been letting it grow up in areas to out compete grasses, especially bermuda and it is not bad as a chop and drop mulch...and I think the 'flowers' are cute, always have:)

Judith, do you find the bitterweed to be a problem?  Do your animals eat it?  

Beau, We don't have any livestock now and when we did it was goats.  Seems I remember they would eat some and it would taint the milk?
It's in most of the pastures here along with cattle grazing, maybe more so late summer after a hot dry season.  I suppose they just don't eat it?  I think it's an indicator of overgrazing or maybe just poor soil.  

Looking again at the photos in this thread I think photo two is more likely an aster  rather than flea bane as flea bane is a spring bloom and this was posted in the fall.