Wednesday Filler: Garlic Mustard

An invasive plant is a dangerous thing, and not merely because eco-purists like to maintain native landscapes.  When invasive plants encounter favorable conditions to grow outside of their natural environments, they often spread rapidly and dominate all other plant life in its new home, mainly because the natural balances that keep it in check in its native range are either diminished or entirely absent.  One such invasive plant that has wreaked havoc in the eastern United States and Canada is garlic mustard (Alliaria Petiolata).

Taken at Island Lake State Recreation Area in Michigan.  This cluster is now dead and removed!

The plant, in pure stands, can take over entire an entire forest understory, preventing any other plant life from proliferating, much less surviving.  In Michigan, it has heavily infested much of the southern portion of the lower peninsula, and alarmingly, has demonstrated that it can adapt to the harsher conditions of the upper peninsula and neighboring northern Ontario.

Now, just in case you are saying "so what" at this point, well, it tends to eradicate our lovely native flowers like wild columbine (Aquilegia Canadensis), which in addition to the picture below, is the same lovely flower you see at the head of the blog every time you swing by this way.

Taken at the Pyramid Point trail, Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, Michigan

Worse than this, it can actually choke out tree seedlings, meaning it has great potential destructive power on entire forests and not simply the understory.  Your author is currently part of a wide effort to help oust this invader from our shores.  If you see one on your property, by all means, pull it out, root and all.