Garlic Mustard

"It's evil!  It grows like crazy and kills other plants," said Jason, when I asked him what he knew about garlic mustard.  Yes folks, that about sums it up.

Garlic mustard is an invasive species that has taken a strangle-hold in several states, starting on the eastern seaboard and moving west.  It has even jumped the Mississippi River.  In some of these places, it has become the main plant in the forest under-brush.

Does it really kill other plants?  Well, it doesn't bite or stab them, but it does put out a chemical in the soil that suppresses a naturally-occurring fungi which many native plants and trees need to grow.  Also, according to the National Park Service, it "...outcompetes native plants by aggressively monopolizing light, moisture, nutrients, soil and space."  So, yeah, it takes everything they need to live, causing them to not live.

And how did Jason learn so much about it?  Mainly from a scout leader out at camp, who has a personal vendetta against the plant.  He can often be spotted pulling the plant up around camp, root and all.  Many are the scouts who have been unsurreptiously enlisted in his cause.  He's one of many people in the area that attend Garlic Pulls in the spring, to try to help eradicate this plant, or at least slow it's spread.