Weed or Wildflower?

Help in identifying this annoying plant, please. It is like a three-leafed clover but absolutely tiny and has weeney yellow flowers which, if they bloom and seed without you noticing, "explode" all over the place ... your eyes included if you are pulling them out! It has deep roots.

Sorry, but I have't got around to this taking pictures and posting them bit yet but maybe someone can identify it from the above description.

Obviously, next question ... how to eradicate it other than as I'm doing, picking out the roots daily from everywhere!

Thanks in advance.

 

Sounds like one of the Medicks - there are several different sorts. They can grow very tiny and close to the ground in lawns or somewhat larger. Does it look like this:

 

I have got a tiny yellow oxalis in my garden which is quite pretty but very invasive and has surprisingly deep roots. I uproot it wherever i find it now as it gets everywhere. I found this picture- mine has red leaves but otherwise the same.

 

Sorry, Hornbeam, no. It's definitely like a clover (three leaf) and single flowers. I had heard "rumours" it was a type of Purslane but I can't identify it with that which has stems "sometimes as large as a computer cable". Mine are like thick cotton thread, reddish.

 

Liz, it looks like your may have found the culprit. Oxalis grows wild here ... came over from Africa, so they say! But that variety which covers the Algarve in the Spring is much taller with sometimes double flowers. I also have the pink Oxalis (which I actually planted!) and had wondered about the connection.

This teeny thing, thriving in the summer, with a three leaf spread of no more than half an inch, nor taller than an inch, is thriving here now invading everything in sight! Do you know if the seedpods just "pop" open and go everywhere?

These suddenly arrived in my garden last year. I have no fingernails left today picking these nightmares out individually.

 

I found this:
http://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profiles1005/oxaliscontrol.asp
I didn't know the seeds were explosive! :D

 

Yes that's it. I've got the one with the dark red leaves on my gravel paths which have weed suppressing mats underneath. Still grows and no - I don't know how to get rid of it either. Got an idea that it has a Canadian connection.

 

I haven't got the red leaves here, it's the stems that are red, but it sounds like the same culprit everywhere. Horrors!!!!