"Help your environment--eat its enemy!" (Jack Sanders)

Recently, I was sitting in my favorite Frostburg watering hole talking to my favorite Frostburg bartender/ceramics artist when he asked me about a plant growing in his yard--a yard with an impressive garden with species I know I could learn about.  He described the plant and drew a picture of it on a napkin.  At first, no bells went off, but perhaps that was because I was thinking of my beloved plants, and not one declared by the State of Maryland as a noxious weed.  As Greg drew the flowers, I said, "It looks like an oniony flower, like a ramps flower, but not with those leaves . . . ." And then it dawned on me:  the dreaded garlic mustard!

Garlic mustard is a deceptively pretty plant with chartreuse, nearly heart-shaped leaves and a small spray of white flowers on top.  It looks like it should be a good thing; I thought so when I first saw it on the edge of the woods in my yard, and I still think it's a shame the plant can't behave itself better in its adopted country.  I first identified it with my National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Wildflowers (Eastern), which says it is a native to Europe and "was first recorded in the United States in 1868 in New York.  Spreading rapidly, it is now known in at least 38 states and four Canadian provinces."

Most of the plants I've covered thus far in "Weed or Wonder" have been medicinal and/or culinary wonders:  coltsfoot, bloodroot, ramps, spring beauty, May-apple.  Today's selection may have culinary value, but its tendency to take over the forest floor, crowding out many native and naturalized beauties, leaves garlic mustard clearly in the "weed" category. Garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata) is listed under Invasive Species of Concern in Maryland as an "herbaceous biennial that overtakes floodplain flora and mesic [moist] uplands, very adaptable to shady forests" (Maryland Department of Agriculture).  In garlic mustard's native home across the pond, insects and fungi check the plant's spread, but introducing those species to control it here could simply end up a frying-pan-into-the-fire sort of situation.

Jack Sanders says that he used to see only a few specimens in his Connecticut woods, but now "hordes inhabit many places where favorite May natives used to bloom.  Garlic mustard shares the same territory and season as bloodroot, Dutchman's breeches, spring beauty, wild ginger, hepatica, toothworts, trilliums and others that suffer at its hands-or roots."  The Plant Conservation Alliance warns, "Wildlife species that depend on these early plants for their foliage, pollen, nectar, fruits, seeds and roots, are deprived of these essential food sources when garlic mustard replaces them. Humans are also deprived of the vibrant display of beautiful spring wildflowers.'   Since some of my very favorite plants have apparently fallen to garlic mustard, I hereby declare myself its enemy.

One of the lovely species threatened by garlic mustard is the West Virginia white butterfly (Pieris virginiensis) because they lay their eggs on the delicate spring wildflowers known as "toothworts" (Dentaria), which are the primary food for their caterpillars and which garlic mustard crowds out.  Toothworts, interestingly, are also in the mustard family, but when the butterflies lay eggs on garlic mustard, toxins in the plant prevent their caterpillars from hatching (Sanders).

Even more alarming to me is a 2006 study that concludes garlic mustard produces chemicals harmful to mycorrhizal fungi required by many North American orchids for proper growth (Stinson et al.)   My recent AppIndie article on lady's slippers describes such a fungus, produced by certain pine trees, required for nourishing the seeds of lady's slippers.  A great loss to our woods would be the eradication of our native slippers to this introduced weed.

The best thing to do with garlic mustard is to yank it up by its roots, which, fortunately, is not difficult to do.  The earlier in the season, the better, so no seeds form.  Garlic mustard is still flowering in Frostburg, but soon the cluster of little white flowers, each a tiny cross of four petals, will become shiny black seedpods.  Each plant can produce thousands of seeds, and seeds can remain viable in the soil for five years or more.  Thus, pulling it before these seeds form would be most effective.  Once you become aware of it, you will see garlic mustard everywhere..

Even deer, which will eat nearly anything green, turn up their noses at garlic mustard, so we can't rely on those foragers to keep the invader in check.  Apparently, we humans are one of the few species that appreciates such a pungent flavor.  So--if you are moved to pull garlic mustard, you might as well give it a try in your kitchen.  The leaves, flowers, and fruit are edible--unless you use chemicals on your lawn, which, of course, would make your yard "unforageable."  Still, if you see it growing by the roadside or in the woods while on a walk, rip it out.  Leave its roots on a rock or road or other surface where they'll be unlikely to recover--or gather it in a basket to bring home for dinner.

In The Secrets of Wildflowers, Jack Sanders' chapter on garlic mustard is titled "A Tasty Foe."  This now-formidible foe was probably brought to the New World as a salad herb.  Its European common names include some that suggest its culinary usefulness:  "hedge garlic, sauce-alone, jack-by-the-hedge, poor man's mustard, jack-in-the-bush, garlic root, garlicwort, mustard root, and penny hedge." Sanders gives examples of ways the plant has been used in cooking:  leaves crushed as "sauce-alone" and eaten with fish or meat (perhaps, he says, to cover off-flavors of meat that wasn't fresh--but I have to believe it would be a tasty accompaniment to fresh fish and meat, too); boiled and served like spinach; fried with herring or bacon; and, of course, in salads.  In Germany, it was known as Sasskraut-"sauce herb"-or Knoblauchsrauke-"garlic cabbage."

Perhaps, with a nod to our region's ramps feeds, we should start garlic mustard feeds throughout Appalachia, encouraging locals to pull these plants in early spring and prepare them in a variety of garlicky ways.  We humans need to do the work that insects and fungi do in garlic mustard's native lands and give this plant an enemy to check its march across America.  We may never completely eradicate garlic mustard, but we could enjoy ourselves knowing that each bite we take is a step toward preserving our woodland wonders from this ruthless bully.

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References

Sanders, Jack.  The Secrets of Wildflowers. 2003.  Guilford, CT:  Globe Pequot Press.

Stinson, KA, Campbell SA, Powell JR, Wolfe BE, Callaway RM, et al. 2006. "Invasive Plant Suppresses the Growth of Native Tree Seedlings by Disrupting Belowground Mutualisms." PLoS Biology 4: e140.