Thanks everybody. It's the background plant I'm talking about, (the one with many small branches that are brown in color) it looks like a mini bush. It was growing in the thin layer of soil on a rock, and was at a south facing location that's pretty dry. Can't get anymore pictures today (bad weather), but I probably can in 2 or 3 days. A new species? lol :-)

I don't think it is Giant Hogweed. I've never heard a single report of Giant Hogweed being found anywhere in Oklahoma. I checked the USDA's NCRS plant website and the distribution map (linked below) doesn't show Giant Hogweed anywhere close to OK. I looked at your photos last night and my initial reaction was it has a slightly familiar look, but I'm not sure I've seen it here. I think it likely is related to something we have here though because it looks just familiar enough that I feel like I ought to know what it is, but I don't. When I have a weed I want to ID, I let one bloom so I can be sure of what it is before I decide whether to keep it or remove it. Some of my favorite wildflowers are considered weeds by most people. When one of those pops up in my garden, I let it stay. I have Indian Paintbrush blooming in the new back garden close to some perennials I planted. I'm happy to have it there. I think it could be from the carrot family, but the only one I have on our property is Queen Ann's Lace and it is too invasive for me to let it stay. If you let one of them go to seed this year, you'll have a million of them next year. I don't need a million wild carrot plants to pull. This year I've managed to find and remove every single one before it has bloomed. However, there are lots of native mallows that have foliage similar to your plant, including the one Robert linked. I like the native poppy mallows and let them stay when I find them in the yard or pastures. As long as you disturb the soil, you'll get a plethora of weeds, and you'll still be seeing about as many a decade or two from now as you are seeing this year. Many weed seeds can survive in soil for many decades. As soon as I disturb soil by rototilling, digging, etc., I quickly cover it with cardboard, landscape fabric or mulch, or some combination thereof, so I don't get a million different weeds sprouting. If you let them sprout and grow, then you have to spend oodles of time figuring out what they are and whether to keep them or remove them. I'd rather not have to deal with them at all. If I wasn't trying to improve our clay soil down deep, I'd never disturb the soil at all. I'd just switch to no-till gardening and disturb the soil as little as possible. I hope one of these days we'll have improved the soil enough that I can switch to no-till. I think we may be getting close. We dug postholes this past week to set new posts to replace the entry arbor with a new one and we had to go down about 18" to get deep enough to find the red clay we had when we started the garden spot. I found that encouraging. Whatever it is, always wear gloves when handling new weeds because it is surprising to me how many of them can cause itches, rashes and other skin irritations if you're allergic to them. They don't have to be poisonous to cause you problems. And, by the way, when I have weeds in a place where I don't want them, I don't worry about IDing them. I dig them, hoe them or yank them out---whatever it takes to remove them and then I cover that soil surface so something new doesn't sprout. I don't really care what they are---I don't have to know what they are in order to remove them. I spent several years walking around our property IDing various native trees, shrubs, grasses, vines, perennial and annual weeds because I wanted to be sure we were not removing something we'd wish we'd kept. Despite that, we still have dozens of kinds of plants on our property that I cannot identify. There's just too many wild plants and not enough time in the world to figure out what each of them is. When someone points at one of them and says "What's that?", I just shrug and say something like "Well, it is in the aster family and I don't know what it is, but the bees like it, so we left it here for them." Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Giant Hogweed Distribution Map

My son's Boy Scout troop spent a day rooting this stuff out of a native garden in a nearby park. Extremely invasive, will out-compete everything around it if you let it. The best time to pull it is before it sets flowers because once it flowers, the little seeds go everywhere. When you do pull it, bag it separately and put it in the trash, not with yard waste.

My thanks to all who responded. countrygirl, we have been very dry here in RI as well, and as we are on the southern coast, we are even drier than the rest of New England. I am no stranger to the fight against invasive plants, as I have mostly reclaimed our partly wooded property from the ravages of bittersweet and poison ivy. Someone once said (in another context) that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. This applies to these nasties as well. Many years ago I realized just what a bully the bittersweet is, but not before some trees were lost. Since then, I have confined it to a small brier patch, and occasionally attack it there as well. In the rest of the yard, both wooded and landscaped, I watch for new bittersweet seedlings, the result of birds' dropping the seeds, and when I find them I put them in the garbage can, to be sure they will leave the premises. I'm hoping to keep the Virginia creeper from taking over, and I'll use the same strategy. I don't mind a little, but I'll try to beat it back before it overruns everything.