Life finds a way (as always)

 I don't know the name of this plant or anything about it other than it's all over the river's edge here in the Greenup pool.

My lack of botanical knowledge holds me back in describing what I see at the river's edge. The question is how much time and effort I want to put into correcting that deficiency.

UPDATE: So I got to thinking about maybe how this is an invasive species a professor at Northern Kentucky University told me about in 2004 when I was working on article for the Huntington newspaper. From what I've found online, this could be something called purple loosestrife, which grows in wet soil and under water, which explains why it's all over the river banks and shorelines here. There were larger plants nearby. They had started to flower, which allowed me to match photos with what I found on the web.