Saw this picture on the Sustainable Gardening blog and immediately recognized this menace. In cleaning up some woodsy areas, I have come across wide swaths of this stuff, pulled it up, forked it out, and presumably got rid of it only to have it appear the next Spring in the midst of the mayapples and trout lilies in exponentially greater numbers than before! Its highly allelopathic nature (think black walnut trees!) and its explosive seed delivery means that this “pretty” little plant can and will spread and wipe out stands of native wildflowers before you know it. Hopefully some biological controls will be available soon because it takes years to eradicate it by hand from one spot and, in the meantime, it has escaped somewhere else.
Garlic Mustard Identification and Control from Barbara Lucas on Vimeo.
