In spring the woodlands are full of beautiful wildflowers – bloodroot, anemone, May apple, trillium and more. Sadly, there are many areas where these beautiful spring ephemerals have been choked out by a rapidly spreading invasive plant called garlic mustard.
Garlic mustard is rather pretty itself, with small white flowers and lacy-edged green leaves, but it has the potential to totally dominate a forest floor in a few years, shading or crowding out native wildflowers and tree seedlings before they have a chance to grow. This can have a disastrous effect on birds and other forest wildlife as their food sources disappear.
High Cliff State Park on the northeast corner of Lake Winnebago has a terrible garlic mustard problem as does Devil’s Lake State Park near Wisconsin Dells. On a walk through the woods in the spring you will find a two-foot high carpet of garlic mustard completely covering the forest floor as far as the eye can see.
Garlic mustard is a biennial plant. It grows a rosette of leaves its first year and in the second year a taller stalk appears with many small white flowers. It blooms from late April through May. Seed pods begin to form soon after flowering begins. Each plant produces hundreds of seeds and they are viable for five to seven years.
In the United States, garlic mustard has no natural enemies, although the University of Minnesota is experimenting with a weevil that may be a method of biocontrol available in a few years. For now, the best way to control garlic mustard is to pull it. It pulls easily from the ground just before and during its flowering period. But it is a tricky plant. If you pull it and lay it on the ground the plant itself will wither, but the flower stalk will turn at a 90 degree angle and grow straight upward, produce flowers and setting seed. It does everything it can to ensure its own survival! Therefore, when garlic mustard is pulled, it should be placed on a hot driveway or parking lot to die completely, or bagged and removed from the site.
Leave a Reply