I suppose you are correct and its a weed, but I'd rather the id relied on something other than its position close to the road... the verge does harbour some local native plants which survive in suburbia.
I mean alternatively you could off the leaf bases (Should be truncate in V.calycina) or the fact is flowering now (V.calcyina won't start till mid October on the tablelands), Flowers are also solitary and they are often on racemes in V.calycina. But the easiest method of seperation is the habitat, V.persica loves distrubed areas and is common on roadsides at this time of year, V.calycina occurs in dry forest or in taller montane forest and appears to need this high quality habitat. Some local natives can survive on disturbed and nutrient rich urban soils, but not all of them, and I've yet to see V.calycina added to this category.
And does V. persica never go bush? Many of the V. calycina sightings on CNM have solitary flowers, and the leaf base shape seems quite variable. Flowering time includes a tick for August for calycina, as well as later in October/November. So I'm not entirely convinced, but I'm about to go and dig it out.
Never is a strong word, but yes rarely. It does seem to do best on nutrient rich soils. I should clarify that V.calycina can have a single flower, but may have racemes up to 10 (check out Betty's key). The tick from August is unrealiable I imagine, it either came from a misID or is a contributor error. I wouldn't rely on that data any more than as a general indicator. When you remove it, you will find the plant is a non-stoloniferous annual.
Yes, it was non-stoloniferous and I found a patch of hundreds of small non-flowering plants in a carpet where obviously a plant had seeded last year, definitely not something I want in the garden or on the verge! The flowering plant had some immature fruits which are very wide, as expected for V. persica. See the new pic I've added.
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