I’m quite curious about garlic mustard. Although my state lists it as “a high priority noxious weed” I’ve only seen it for sure once, and recently maybe discovered it a second time. The for sure sighting was on a farm where it had been planted intentionally. It did not seem to be dense enough to be outcompeting anything else around. More recently I’ve noticed some plants blooming along the roadside that I suspect may be garlic mustard, but I have not yet pulled over for a closer look to confirm. I’m fairly certain I’ve drive-by id’d them correctly though. They are growing in a rather open habit with a fair amount of space between individual stems and intermingled through other plants.
As to whether someone plants garlic mustard intentionally on a farm, the domesticated mustards, which include cabbage, kale, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, broccoli along the mustards grown for their seed that are ground up for the hotdog topping and pressed for canola oil, their genetic cousin garlic mustard has a white flower whereas all of those have a yellow flower.
Yellow mustard is a hard-to-eradicate weed in a hay field whereas garlic mustard thrives in shade such as the understory to a forest, but I have seen it grow among grass…
As to garlic mustard, how can anything nutritious to people and birds alike be such a concern. Your usual kind of lawn weed such as a dandelion or hayfield weed of a thistle is a perenial forming deep roots making it hard to get rid of by pulling. Garlic mustard in biannual (2-year life cycle), and its second year is when it “bolts” and forms its cross-shaped white flower in May, sets seed in June. It does not produce airborne seed like the usual lawn and hayfield weeds, rather, it drops its seeds in place.
Mustard seed can be viable for at least 10 years, so once garlic mustard gets established, it develops a thick carpet and chokes everything else out. Your cabbage or kale plant does the same thing, but most people in Northern states haven’t seen it in its second-year, seed-bearing year because it is not as cold hardy as garlic mustard and domestic mustards have natural predators that chew up the leaves that garlic mustard lacks in North America.
I have seen garlic mustard in action on what was my parents’ property in Northeast Wisconsin before I knew what it was to take action. It completely blanketed the wooded grounds around the house, and I have been fighting it with hand-pulling, string trimming and glyphosate herbicide for the last 20 years. I have it “under control” but its eradication is a distant dream.
Yeahhhh I’ve found in my life in plant communities the native only plant people have a lot of similar characteristics and traits to nationalists. I don’t want to be inflammatory but they use a lot of violent language about invasives and I honestly think ecologically speaking arent seeing the whole picture. Yes there is some element of control needed, but if we kill all the invasives by any means necessary we are destroying a lot of other stuff in the process. Many invasives are colonizing disturbed soil, that has been disturbed by humans, a lot of these plants seem oppressive just because of sampling bias because we tend to see them the most living in disturbed areas, however I never really see Bradford pear growing randomly out in forests when I’m wilderness hiking, for example. Maybe not the best example, but I think you get my point.
I just don’t think dumping Roundup by plane into sensitive estuarine ecosystems in Washington is a sustainable solution to their cordgrass problems, for example. Same with the invasives in Florida, I was reviewing a study when I was still in school that discussed that some of the most biologically productive environments in the Everglades were those that had high numbers of Brazilian pepper and maleluca, any Floridan readers will know how despised these two invasives are in Florida. Not only that, but they found higher endangered species populations in these areas as well. Not only that, but any efforts to control these invasives will a) destroy these wildlife habits and b) be generally worthless, as unless you are filling the niche with something else, these plants (evolved to be rapid colonizers) will just come right back, as they are designed to do.
I think a more broad perspective has to be taken in terms of forest management and succession with regards to these invasives. No one wants our local native flora and fauna to go extinct, but man it seems like the world is getting tired of nuance in discussions and anything you talk about today you have to either be on the side of good or evil, or us vs them. It’s clear what we are doing now, isn’t working and might only be causing more harm going forward.
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Brazilian Pepper, Maleluca, Australian Pine and Water Hyacinth are all considered invasive and bad for different reasons. I’ll go from most straightforward to least. Australian Pine grows fast (for a 30-50ft tall tree) and most importantly ISN’T wind resistant, and they cause tons of damage when a hurricane comes through. No one really considered them a problem (at least openly) until Hurricane Wilma in 05’, and then there was a mass cutting of them after more than 100 trees fell.
Water Hyacinth (which is like a lilypad) choke out waterways, blocking sunlight out for underwater plants, outcompeting our native surface plants, and reduces the overall oxygen in the water. Its basically a water Kudzu where it covers everything and starves it out.
Brazilian Pepper, simply put, outcompetes mangroves. If it didn’t do that, it wouldn’t be public enemy number 1, but mangroves are considered the most important plant to our estuaries. It also spreads like crazy, I’ve seen it on little islands in the Keys as well as in the center of the state (Lakeland). It outcompetes a majority of out natives, but the big one is that it beats out mangroves.
Maleluca is a weird one (imo anyways) because its biggest effect on the environment is exactly why we brought it here in the first place. It absorbs water rapidly. So if you were to go to an already established maleluca forest (like the one off of 75 in Miami Dade) you wouldn’t really be able to tell why it was an issue. But that forest used to be a swamp or a bog, and now its basically high and dry. Great for development, not great for native species (or for our waterflow in general). They also spread like a weed (like all invasive) and this is more prevalent on the more forested West Coast of Florida (Collier/Lee/Charlotte they are in like every pocket of forest around). The West Coast is also more prone to fire, and malelucas are very susceptible to fire (saw it first hand last year in Port Charlotte).
TLDR: My point was while all invasives may outcompete natives, they usually aren’t considered a massive issue until they do something specifically we really don’t want. My examples were:
Australian Pines - Fast growing big tree, falls in hurricanes
Water Hyacinth- Chokes out rivers
Brazilian Peppers- Outcompetes keystone species (mangroves)
Maleleuca- Changes ecosystem and is a fire hazard
(Honorable mention goes to camphor because its annoying and in my yard)
Basically, I agree with you that it is indeed, a nuanced topic.
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They are bad for more reasons than that! They drop such a huge volume of “needles” that they often form thick needle carpets below them that rapidly alter the soil chemistry so that most other species struggle to grow under and around them. They also have a symbiotic relationship with wildfire, and those needle beds are part of that, so greatly increase the risk of a fire starting or spreading, compared to the leaf litter you’d normally see in those ecosystems (salty lowlands on the margins of mangrove swamps).
I saw firsthand how “Australian pine” (not actually a pine) can dominate salty coastal land in Miami, and after Hurricane Andrew in the early 90s there was (for the first time) a concerted effort to remove them from spoil islands and coastal parklands. It’s remarkable how much more alive those islands are today, 30 years later.
I do agree with the basic premise of this thread (we shouldn’t reflexively reject all non-native plants), but Australian pine is a menace on many levels in most of the places it can thrive, and I have seen how effective its removal can be with regular removal of trees before they get big.
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For sure! They used to be at every park by the beach in Broward too, until Wilma came around and then there was an effort to remove them. The last time I was at a park in Palm Beach (its been quite a few years now) they still have a large amount of them. Now that I think about it, the effort after a hurricane might be more to do with the fact that “the equipment is in the area, so we might as well get rid of these now while we can”. Last year I did hurricane relief work after Ian in SWFL, and the same premise was happening. Bunch of APs fell, might as well cut down the rest. They dominate all the bigger little islands off the coast.
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I totally get this, but I do end up painting stumps of autumn olive with glyphosate to keep it from resprouting once I cut it down (in places I don’t want it). It grows back very, very fast and grows into a tree very fast. If fields aren’t mowed where I am (only grazed) you will get an abundance of autumn olive and invasive thistle.
It will rapidly overtake an area (For example, an orchard that has been neglected for a couple years.)
It also seems to be thriving as an understory tree on my land. Even in the densely wooded areas. It seems to have a preference for “not too steep” as well. Red cedar seems to be doing better on the steep areas.
I’m in VA and regularly travel to MD, WV, and PA. It is everywhere in these states. It seems to do well in mildly disturbed areas. Roadsides, places mowed 1-2 times a year that are in a bit of shade. It doesn’t bother me as much as some of the others because it’s relatively easy to pull out and/or mow over.
I do try to get rid of it before it can set seed because it seems to spread a bit too easily and I could easily see it getting out of control.
Good to know that this can happen. I will be careful not to let it get a foothold.
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AO can be horrible in the NE, and very hard to get rid of. I’ve seen pretty land I otherwise might have considered that was covered with it maybe 15 ft tall, and so dense you couldn’t walk thru at all. Even if you doze out big plants, they come back, and I’ve read you usually need to poison more than once. A rather expensive problem. (Goats will eat it tho.)
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