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Yanking and Bagging Garlic Mustard

© Gregg Pasterick

During one of our springtime forays into the woods of Indiana a couple years back, my wife and I noticed piles of Garlic Mustard here and there along the path. Someone with an obvious love of native environments had been yanking up the aggressively invasive non-native wildflower, doing their small part to slow its spread. Sometime later we ran into a ranger dragging along a full trash bag like Santa Claus at his first stop of the night. As we approached each other she stopped to pick up one of those piles of Garlic Mustard, and stuffed it into her overflowing burden. When we commented on the conscientious hiker whom had been willing to yank up all the Garlic Mustard, she replied, "Only half conscientious."

"Huh?"

Yanking up Garlic Mustard and piling it up isn't enough. In fact, it helps spread the darn plant because it will still go to seed. It doesn't even wait for pollinators.

Garlic Mustard (Alliaria petiolata), a member of the Mustard Family (Brassicaceae), is a biennial, requiring two years to complete its life cycle. Seeds germinate early in the spring of the first year, and grow as a basal rosette. The plant over-winters and flowers later in the second spring. It produces lots and lots of seeds, which are dormant, enabling them to remain viable in the soil for many years.

This abundant alien is easily recognized, growing up to 3' tall, with triangular, deeply toothed leaves, and second year plants are topped with small white cross-shaped flowers that have 4 petals. Fruits are slender capsules that are 1 to 2.5" in length. The seeds are oblong, black and occur in a single row within the capsule. It is so named because the crushed leaves give off a garlic aroma.

Garlic Mustard was introduced from Europe, presumably as a plant with medicinal properties, and like any plant removed to a distant land, it was given carte blanche to thrive. It is native mostly to the northern areas of Europe, from England east to Czechoslovakia, and from Sweden and Germany south to Italy. It was first collected in North America in 1868 on Long Island, New York. It has since spread to at least 30 eastern and midwestern states as well as 3 Canadian provinces. In the west Garlic Mustard has turned up in Washington, Utah, Colorado, Idaho, and British Columbia. It has also spread to North Africa, India, Sri Lanka, New Zealand,