Garlic mustard, deer and people

A friend who loves to garden got me to thinking about garlic mustard. With great frustration, she described her efforts to eradicate this invasive plant from her property, located on the edge of an urban woodland, including multiple applications of Round-up, and zealous scrutiny of every inch of her land, to prevent plants from getting re-established from seed. Garlic mustard, a plant native to Europe, has rapidly naturalized from its introduction in New York throughout the northeast and also is common here in the Upper Midwest. The plant has a two year life cycle. First year plants are rosettes of leaves growing close to the ground, while the second year plants flower and produce profuse numbers of seeds. The plant in both stages crowds out many native plants.

Deer prefer native plants and do not browse on garlic mustard. However, they spread the small seeds, which get caught in their coats and dispersed throughout the woods. In our neighborhood, deer are also over-abundant. Our house similarly sits on the edge of an urban forest. Some of my neighbors think feeding the deer is a lovely thing to do. They have trained the deer to associate our neighborhood with LUNCH. Not only do we have large number of deer, but the deer have gotten used to munching on just about anything we plant. In our yard, this has included baby rhubarb (and I thought those leaves were toxic!), tomato plants, a spruce tree, and a newly planted cherry tree. As a result, I have developed a certain level of hostility toward deer. I even had a dream in which I was inciting my spouse to the murder of baby deer.

If you think about it, deer, garlic mustard and people have something in common. We are flora and fauna that are extraordinarily good at adapting to this environment. All of us are responding to the biological imperative to be all we can be. Garlic mustard plants are opportunists who have found a biological advantage, and played it for all that it is worth. Deer populations have roared back from their low point in the 1930s, when there were only about 300,000, to approximately 30 million at present. Motor vehicle collisions and crop damage are some of the problems associated with our high deer numbers.

We could go on at great length about the problems associated with the adaptable success of humans. Pollution, global warming, extinctions, war and violence are a few of the issues that come immediately to mind. Like deer and garlic mustard, we humans also have some redeeming qualities. Unlike deer and garlic mustard, we have the capacity to be aware of our role in the ecosystem. When I get discouraged about damage we humans have done, I think about the deer and garlic mustard too. All of us are living out our biological imperative. Unfortunately, the fittest and most adaptable survive, and then we must all deal with the consequences of their success.

I try to look for the silver linings. On November 4th, hunting season begins in these parts. The style of hunters varies greatly from one person to the next, but the season reinforces a habit of attention to nature, which is not a bad thing. The hunters need to do their work, or deer numbers around here would be unmanageable. Many hunters donate their venison to food shelves and feeding programs, which is a good thing. Venison is a lean, healthy meat and is not raised in industrial conditions, unlike most of our other meats. I have acquired a taste for it, benefiting from the gifts of hunters I have known.

Garlic mustard is certainly a pest, but Wildman Steve Brill, a well-known naturalist and forager, has identified it as a tasty edible plant. The infant plants, mustard sprouts, taste like garlic. The rosette-shaped leaves are an edible green that tastes best in the early spring or the late fall. During a time of the year when there is little left to forage in the woods, the garlic mustard is still there.

I guess there are some silver linings associated with humans too. I’ll leave you to think about those.