In his classic military treatise “The Art of War,” Sun Tzu proclaimed, “Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster.”

A contemporary of his, the wise Confucius, chimed in by saying, “The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name.”

I doubt they were talking about weeds, but if they liked to putter around in the garden, they might have been.

I’m no ancient Chinese fount of wisdom, but I believe wholeheartedly you should get to know all those little rascally plants that keep popping up in your flower beds and call them by their proper names. Here are just a few of them.

Take, for example, a little nuisance some of us have opted to call “that little clover thing.” Low to the ground and usually a coppery color in the sun, its heart-shaped leaves are a dead giveaway it’s not a clover at all but an oxalis. Oxalis corniculata, or creeping woodsorrel, has tiny yellow flowers with five petals and establishes itself with a sturdy tap root and then by creeping along, rooting at its nodes. That’s what makes it a pain to remove: you have to dig up every teeny, tiny rooted stem.

What’s even screwier when it comes to common names, Oxalis corniculata  isn’t really a sorrel at all. But I know a particularly annoying weed that is: sheep’s sorrel.

In some circles, sheep sorrel, or Rumex acetosella, is known as “rubber band plant” because its slender traveling roots are so stretchy you expect to hear them go “boing” when they snap. As it matures, its small arrowhead shaped leaves might be topped with a spike of very small maroon female flowers.

Two irritating members of the pea family are black medick (Medicago lupulina) and hairy vetch (Vicia villosa), which look nothing alike.

In fact, I think Medicago lupulina is what most people are thinking when they mistake it with Oxalis corniculata. It too is very low to the ground and spreading, and it does have a tiny yellow flower. However, its flower has the requisite round clover shape and its  leaves are three-lobed, not heart-shaped.

Vicia villosa, or wretched vetch, as I like to call is, has tendrils like pea vines and long, narrow pinkish purple flowers.

It’s an agricultural escapee that if left to its own devices will shroud entire shrubs like a cargo net.

And speaking of cargo nets, Velcro plant can have the same effect on your landscaping. Of course, I mean cleavers, or Galium aparine. Also known to some as catchweed bestraw, you’ll recognize it because of its square stems with downward facing bristles that let it attach to anything that comes in contact with it.

Its leaves are similar in shape to its cousin’s, sweet woodruff, but this plant grows up and out to form dense mats instead of spreading sideways via rhyzomatous roots.

Finally, as you weed, think of what Victor Hugo wrote in his masterpiece “Les Misérables.” “Remember this, my friends: there are no such things as bad plants or bad men. There are only bad cultivators.”

I don’t think Victor ever met Stinky Bob.