This is garlic mustard, an invasive species that’s not just in Newton but in much of the Northeast and Midwest. The Newton Conservators and the Invasive Plant Task Force have been doing weed pulls in areas like Cold Spring Park, Dolan Pond Conservation Area, and the Charles River Greenway for a few years now with some success, but it’s a constant battle to keep it from taking over and crowding out native species. Each plant can produces hundreds, or even a thousand seeds, depending on how big it’s gotten, and produces a chemical in the soil that inhibits native plants. It’s a biennial, meaning it doesn’t produce seeds until the second year, so weed pulls concentrate on getting the second year plants.
It’s not just in wooded areas in Newton. It’s in yards, on berms, along fences and parking lots. You don’t have to look very hard to find it. I was on my way to Cold Spring Park to get some pictures of it, when I saw a bit on a berm from Centre Street (above left). Then I was driving down Cabot and saw a large patch behind the chain link fence across from Claremont St., in the woodsy area north of the soccer field (right, this is only part of it).
Right now the second year plants have lost their little white flowers, and the seed pods have formed. If you see even a single plant, or small patch, pull it out by the roots, put it in a plastic bag (not shaking out the soil from the roots, because it likely contains seeds which can germinate for up to several years) and dispose of it in the trash, not compost. This is an example o
f ‘an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure’ because it will keep small infestations from becoming big ones. These spiky things are the pods; they’re like peapods, in that each little bump is a seed inside.
If you’d like to get Invasive Plant Task Force emails about weed pulls and progress, contact Eric Olson at [email protected]
You can read more about garlic mustard online; here’s a good FAQ: http://www.ipm.msu.edu/garlicFAQ.htm
And although I’ve never tried it, the leaves are supposed to be good salad greens, which is probably why it was brought over from Europe in the 1800s in the first place. You can Google ‘garlic mustard recipes’ but please don’t grow it on purpose, there’s way too much out there already!
Garlic mustard must be in the air this weekend Julia. I’ve just been trading emails this morning on the topic of organizing a “garlic mustard pull” in the coming weeks, in Upper Falls, by Quinnobequin Rd. I’ve been hearing about garlic mustard for a while but frankly, know just about nothing about it. I’m planning on signing up as a volunteer for a day in the “mustard puller army” in our neighborhood and find out all about it.
Despite the fact that I don’t have much of a horticultural bent, I also recently became aware of another prevalent invasive species. Asian Bittersweet is another invasive species with a bit of a dramatic monster movie aspect to it. It’s a fast growing vine that wraps around tree trunks as it grows, and eventually pulls over the entire tree.
The very overgrown portion of the Upper Falls Greenway route behind Avalon on Needham St is loaded with it. This nasty vine has already taken down a number of trees and is working on more. During the recent NewtonSERVES cleanup, much of the work on that portion of the trail was cleaning up the destruction wrought by this killer vine. The vine itself is still plentiful down there. At some point, we’ll need a concerted effort to go after the vine and stop it before it heartlessly claims future victims in its relentless killing streak (I told you it was dramatic :-) ).
Jerry, nice to hear you’ve enlisted in the war on invasives! I have never dealt with Asian bittersweet, just garlic mustard and the harder-to-pull Japanese knotweed. Let me know when you’re working on the Upper Falls Greenway. I wouldn’t be good at climbing, but could help from the ground, and am curious to see the area.
You might like this article from the Washington Post, which must be popular because it’s still on their website two years later:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/11/AR2010061101911.html
Jerry, the Greenway is home to many invasives: Japanese Knotweed, asian bittersweet, garlic mustard, Japanese barberry, Newton DPW dumping waste, NStar substation waste – to name just a few. That’s probably why no one for decades has wanted to do anything about it.
We moved in our house in 1996, and it took us ten years to eradicate the garlic mustard. Its effect on the soil seems to last. Nothing but weeds would grow where it had been. This year, we finally have gardens where the garlic mustard used to be. And the seeds are insidious, every now and then, we still find a plant and pull it out immediately. DON”T put it in your compost pile, whatever you do.