Canis lupus hominis

I opened up the local online daily newspaper this headline to see this headline: WILL PUBLIC WATER COME TO CALHOUN WITH A GARLIC MUSTARD CHASER?

This particular water line extension has been very contentious. In fact, the money appropriated for it was ear-marked seven or eight years ago. In a very rural part of West Virginia, access to clean and reliable sources of water is a major concern. People have put in long hours on this water extension, and it is very important for this community.

Garlic mustard is a pain. Its full effect hasn’t hit this part of West Virginia yet, but it could be very damaging to our forest ecosystem. The plant is referred to in British parlance as “Jack-by-the-hedge.”

It is an innocuous plant, but its real problem is what it does to the soil chemistry:

Garlic mustard roots put out chemicals that change the soil that have now been proven to kill soil organisms responsible for the germination of yellow poplar, sugar and red maple, white ash and cherry seedlings.

There is also a large and growing list of native flowers and herbaceous plants that are killed by the changes in soil chemistry caused by garlic mustard.

For healthy soil, garlic mustard is the vegetative equivalent of AIDS.

For those of you who are not aware. Calhoun County, West Virginia, is over 90 percent forested. Its timber resources are a major source of wealth and tax revenue.  Healthy forests are key to having anything resembling a healthy economy.

To  make matters worse, it very easily colonizes densely forested land and then can spread very quickly:

Unlike other invasive plants such as Japanese stiltgrass, multiflora rose or autumn olive that move into and become established in disturbed areas like pastures, gullies and roadsides, garlic mustard readily spreads from ditches and roadsides into high quality forests where no soil disturbance has taken place.

A single plant can produce nearly 10,000 seeds and with over 250,000 seeds per pound, garlic mustard seed is extremely small. Each of the two inch long spikes on these garlic mustard plants can hold up to 100 seeds.

A golf ball sized clod of mud can hold hundreds of seeds.

In addition to causing long term damage to soil fertility and woodland productivity, garlic mustard produces seed that will stay viable in the soil for years as a “seed bank”.

The company that has been contracted to put in the water line currently has its equipment in an area where there are large stands of garlic mustard.  The potential risks from spreading garlic mustard could be prevented if the company simply washed its equipment before moving it in.

However, it is under no legal requirement to do so, and it probably won’t.

I do believe that these improvements are necessary to increase the standard of living to people living in this area. It’s just that the risk that garlic mustard poses must be considered in that calculus. It would be simple to mitigate these problems, but it would cost some money.

And, of course, garlic mustard is likely to get here on its own.

But maybe it could be delayed a bit.

I don’t know.

However, I will say that whenever I am out, the multiflora rose, the autumn olive, and the stilt grass have just about taken over the whole understory. That’s great for rabbits and certain songbirds, such as towhees.

Although West Virginia’s state tourism slogan is “Wild and Wonderful,” it is really quite domesticated place.  European man domesticated this garden a long time ago.  The forests that exist here are not the same ones that were here in the late eighteenth century. Very little of the original “forest primeval” still exists here. Most of what is now forest was pasture as recently as forty years ago.

I can’t imagine this countryside without acres and acres of dense forest. Let’s hope that the effects of garlic mustard on our landscape is as minimal as possible, because I don’t think we’re going to be able to stop it.