These two rascals compete throughout my garden, but they are both quite pretty, and quite good-humoured about being weeded out. In medieval times herb bennet was recommended for treating all sorts of ailments.

OBEDIENT SERVANTS

Herb bennet and herb robert, two old friends,
Wait for the nature class, permitted weeds
Crowding the shingle, wild, where the garden ends.
“Look, class, the characteristics that nature breeds!

“What is the same, what different in these two plants?”
Both under knee-high, both springing from a floppy rosette;
Tough, slender, branching stems, highways for the ants;
Leaves: dark green, glossy, or fretted into dainty net.

Red-dipped, the lace-work; bristly, the glossy green;
Symmetrical, the lace-work; off-centre, the bristling point
Mounting from rounded base-leaves, same hairy sheen.
“Now, what’s the arithmetic when we examine each joint?”

Herb bennet, two branches, leaf curled around the node.
Herb robert, five branches, two lifting leaves of lace.
Herb bennet, one branch continues in branching mode.
Herb robert, two branches still branching, criss-crossing the space.

Last, from each joint, the tiny, five-petalled flowers:
Singly on bennet, rounded, in cheery yellow;
Seedhead, a bristling burr, in ambush towers;
Twins for Robert, more delicate than his fellow:

In fairy pink, tooth-lipped and veined with red,
The tight-eyed flowers sprinkle the shaggy lace.
The pointed bill spears out when petals are shed.
Five coiling springs shall fling the seeds to their new place.

“Leaf and stem and flower and seed: Look class! Think!
All show their identity, you can’t get them wrong;”
Still branching, tiny yellow and tiny pink;
Herb bennet and herb robert, all summer long.