Got garlic mustard? Kill it

Excerpt

Garlic mustard has a two-year growing cycle. In the first year, the plants remain green rosettes close to the ground, although the leaves smell of garlic if you crush them. In the second, they burst upward, preparing to spray seeds that can stay viable for seven years.

Don Cipollini, biology professor at Wright State University and one of the nation’s leading experts on garlic mustard, says the plant is so persistent that unless you dig up at least 90 percent of it, those left simply grow bigger and disperse the same amount of seed as the original stand.

Cipollini—who inspired a recent Washington Post blog about tasty garlic-mustard cooking (high in Vitamin C but with a soupcon of cyanide)—is not ready to call it the main villain in the decline of the tiny West Virginia White, at least not yet.

“The whole butterfly thing is actually quite complex,” he says.

Read more at Cleveland.com.