My first time volunteering with the High Park VSP!

I've been wanting to get involved with the High Park Volunteer Stewardship Program for over a year but usually my son is with me on Sunday mornings when they do their thing. But this weekend he's at the cottage with his dad and stepmother, so I got to attend today and help pull garlic mustard, a plant I love to hate as readers of this blog will know. We were working on an area south of the Black Oak Café, which had about a zillion garlic mustard plants in bloom, and some starting to set seed. Frankly it looked rather futile to me, but with a large number of volunteers we cleared a huge area in only a couple of hours. I'm hoping the before and after pics the organizers took will be posted online soon; if you're in High Park, just follow the road downhill behind the Black Oak Café and note the huge difference between the right side where we were pulling and the left side which is still a sea of garlic mustard.

For me the high point was discovering this very well camouflaged toad, which I thought was a clod of dirt until it started to hop. Anyone know what species this little treasure is? Our work also uncovered a chipmunk (too fast to photograph), starry false Solomon's seal (native), greater celandine (not native), and numerous maple seedlings.

Afterwards, I headed for Rainbow Market Square to see Star Trek, arriving a couple of hours early to make sure I got in (it was sold out when I tried to see it yesterday). Ticket in hand, I went to a nearby antique store, Ephemera Too, where I discovered this wonderful book, How to Know the Wild Flowers, by Mrs. William Starr Dana, published in 1899! It's a treasure trove of short articles and full-page black-and-white illustrations of a variety of north-eastern North American wildflowers, mostly native. How could I resist? I decided it would be my birthday present to myself (only 6 weeks early).

(The movie was great too!)

Alliaria petiolata: flowers and seed pods

Warning: this is an extremely invasive plant in Toronto.

Yes, I know, this is my third post about garlic mustard in May, but this is the first time I've shown the fully opened flowers and nefarious seed pods of this plant. Here you can see how garlic mustard practically forms a monoculture. (Photo taken in High Park, south of the Black Oak Café).

Here's a close-up of the flowers and seed pods. If you missed it, or if you aren't convinced that this plant should be uprooted on sight (at least in North America), reread my post about why garlic mustard is horrible. Then read Sarah's article, Top 10 Reasons to Search and Destroy Garlic Mustard. Then if you still aren't convinced, google it and see why experts agree this plant does not belong here in North America.

Alliara petiolata: flower buds

This is an extremely invasive species in Toronto. Although I just posted a whole long thing about why garlic mustard is evil, I haven't posted a picture of the flower buds. I was disheartened to see it's that time of year again already. Photo taken at Wilket Creek Park.

Alliaria petiolata: foliage

This is an extremely invasive species in Toronto. Alliaria petiolata, known in English as "garlic mustard" and in French as alliaire officinale ou herbe à ail is a biennial native to Eurasia and northern Africa. It is one of the worst invasive plants in Toronto.

Garlic mustard was originally brought to Canada from Europe as a food plant. Unfortunately, it has flourished too well. Garlic mustard is not edible to Canadian wildlife, it emerges early in the spring before many native plants, it produces large numbers of seeds, and it harms mycorrhizal fungi that native plants need to grow properly. These factors give it an advantage over native plants, with the result that it can invade forests and outcompete them. There are areas of the forest in High Park that are completely overrun with garlic mustard, at the expense of native plants. Garlic mustard is invading the forest around the Ontario Science Centre as well, endangering their beautiful white trilliums. Because Canadian wildlife won't eat garlic mustard, replacing native plants with garlic mustard means less food for wild animals and therefore a loss of animal as well as plant biodiversity.

For these and other reasons it is important for Toronto gardeners to be able to recognize garlic mustard and remove it. In the first year, garlic mustard forms a low rosette of heart- or kidney-shaped leaves with a jagged edge. The leaves have a distinctive garlicky smell when crushed. In the second year, the plant produces a stem 30-60 cm tall with clusters of small, white, four-petalled flowers. The flowers are followed by skinny upright seed pods, but please don't let it get to that stage if you can help it. After setting seed, the plant dies, which is good news. (There are some good photos of garlic mustard leaves, flowers, and seed pods on this page by the Plant Conservation Alliance Alien Plant Working Group.)

To control garlic mustard, remove the entire plant in the first year, or remove at the very least the flowers in the second year (in erosion-prone sites you may want to leave the roots of second year plants in place, but cut the plants off close to the ground, otherwise more flowers can form in the leaf axils). Don't leave the flowers or unripe seedpods lying around as even if cut off from the root they can still ripen and produce viable seed. You can eat the plants if you like; here's a recipe for garlic mustard pesto (I haven't tried it myself yet).

Garlic mustard seed in the soil remains viable for years, so eradicating it is a long-term project. So let's make it a May tradition to enjoy a walk outside eradicating garlic mustard!