Garlic Mustard: Stewardship Network May Webcast

Join us for our next FREE monthly Stewardship Network Webcast! The webcast will be on Wednesday, May 14th, and will focus on the "Garlic Mustard"

Presentation by: Jeff Evans, USDA Agricultural Research Service; and Lisa Brush, The Stewardship Network

Date: Wednesday, May 14th, 2014
Time: 12 noon to 1pm Eastern
Place: Your Computer!

Click here to view webcast!
(Link will become live day of webcast)

With The Stewardship Network's annual Garlic Mustard Challenge underway, it's a great time to discuss this herbaceous invasive! Garlic mustard takes over our woodlands and out competes native wildflowers and tree seedlings, threatening biodiversity and forest regeneration. It's been creeping its way across the continent, and can now be found in many parts of the U.S. and Canada. Join us for an overview of the biology of garlic mustard, emphasizing critical stages for management. Multiple management methods (mechanical, manual, and chemical), will be discussed, including when and where it is appropriate to conduct each method. We will also discuss the positive impact of multi-year management, and organizing and engaging volunteers to help in our efforts. Many hands make light work, and many trained eyes help us get a bigger picture of where invasive plants are in our communities.

Join Jeff Evans, USDA Agricultural Research Service; and Lisa Brush, The Stewardship Network as they present on this important stewardship topic.
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Jeff Evans - Jeff is a population ecologist with the USDA's Agricultural Research Service who specializes in invasive species. His research focus is the development of population models that can guide management strategies for weedy and invasive species. Jeff earned his Ph.D. from Michigan State University studying the demography of the invasive weed garlic mustard. He move to New Hampshire in 2009 as a postdoctoral researcher and teacher at Dartmouth College, and now studies the management of herbicide resistant weeds in agricultural systems. He continues to work on garlic mustard biology whenever possible.

Lisa Brush - Executive Director, The Stewardship Network. Lisa has worked in the environmental field in Michigan for the last fifteen years. She is currently the Executive Director of the Stewardship Network and has been involved with the Network since its inception more than 10 years ago. She has a wealth of experience helping non-scientific people understand scientific issues. For over nine years, as she has built and coordinated The Stewardship Network, she has emphasized effective and meaningful stakeholder involvement in developing and implementing all aspects of this program. She has a M.S. in Natural Resources from the University of Michigan and a B.A. (Science in Society) from Wesleyan University.

New Garlic Mustard Publication from the USDA Forest Service FHTET

The Forest Health Technology Enterprise Team was created by the Deputy Chief for State and Private Forestry in February 1995 to develop and deliver forest health technology services to field personnel in public and private organizations in support of the Forest Service's land ethic, to "promote the sustainability of ecosystems by ensuring their health, diversity, and productivity."

The Enterprise Team has two components. The core component, sponsored by Forest Health Protection, supports the Forest Service in meeting its legal mandate for the protection of forest health. The entrepreneurial component builds the team's capacity to fulfill its mission by providing services on a cost-reimbursable basis.
 

USDA Forest Service’s FHTET  has release a new publication on the biology and biological control of Garlic Mustard.

Biology and Biological Control of Garlic Mustard

Roger Becker, Esther Gerber, Hariet L. Hinz, Elizabeth Katovich, Brendon Panke, Richard Reardon, Mark Renz, and Laura Van Riper

FHTET-2012-05, November 2013

Take measures to prevent spread of invasive species while enjoying nature

by CHRIS YOUNG

GateHouse Media Illinois

Posted May 04, 2013 @ 07:21 PM

When it comes to preventing the spread of invasive species, people who love the outdoors should take steps to be sure they are not part of the problem.

Many invasive species — defined as plants and animals that can cause economic and ecological harm — crowd out native species and can be difficult to control.

Chris Evans, invasive species campaign coordinator with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, said people need to learn to identify invasive species and help prevent their spread.

“One thing they can do is familiarize themselves with the invasives,” Evans said. “Learn what is in your area.”
One example is Japanese stilt grass, an annual that is a major invader of forests in southern Illinois.
Evans said the plant is making its way northward, probably because seeds are carried on boots, all-terrain vehicles and even horses.

“We re trying to get people to watch for it,” he said.

Officials in Illinois are keeping a close eye on hydrilla, an aquatic plant.

Photo via Wikipedia:

Hydrilla verticillata collection LakeSeminoleFL.jpg

“It’s not here yet,” Evans said. “But it is pretty abundant south and east and is showing up a few places in the Midwest. It can just dominate in a reservoir or aquatic system.”

It was once sold as an aquarium plant, according to www.protectyourwaters.net.

So great is the threat that a task force has been formed to plan a response should hydrilla appear in Illinois.
Like another invasive aquatic plant, Eurasian water milfoil, it spreads by plant fragments that can hitch a ride on boats.

As temperatures warm and people head outside, Evans said people should clean their shoes and equipment (including boats) before moving from one site to another.

For landowners who don’t know if they have a problem, Evans suggests a visit to a local University of Illinois Extension or U.S. Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service office. Local staff members will be familiar with problem plants in your area.

“If they don’t know the answer to your question, they will know who to ask,” Evans said.
Some of the invaders are in the news frequently — the advance of Asian carp is one familiar example. But carp and plants aren’t the only invaders....read more

Over time, an invasive plant loses its toxic edge

CHAMPAIGN, lll. – Like most invasive plants introduced to the U.S. from Europe and other places, garlic mustard first found it easy to dominate the natives. A new study indicates that eventually, however, its primary weapon – a fungus-killing toxin injected into the soil – becomes less potent.

The study, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is one of the first to show that evolutionary forces can alter the very attributes that give an invasive plant its advantage. In fact, the study suggests the plant’s defenses are undermined by its own success.

Garlic mustard comes from a family of smelly, sharp-tasting plants that includes cabbage, radish, horseradish and wasabi. Unlike most plants, which rely on soil fungi to supplement them with phosphorous, nitrogen and water, garlic mustard gets by without the extra help, said Richard Lankau, a postdoctoral researcher at the Illinois Natural History Survey (INHS) at the University of Illinois. Lankau led the study with INHS plant ecologist Greg Spyreas.

“For whatever reason, these plants just don’t hook up with the soil fungus,” Lankau said. Instead, garlic mustard produces glucosinolates, pungent compounds that leach into the soil and kill off many soil fungi, especially those native to North America. This weakens the native plants. As a result, garlic mustard now grows in dense patches in many North American woodlands, its preferred habitat. Those patches are often devoid of native plants.

Lankau began the new study with a seemingly obvious question: Once garlic mustard has vanquished most of its competitors, why would it invest as much in maintaining its toxic arsenal? He predicted – correctly, it turns out – that levels of glucosinolates in the plant would diminish over time.

“When you’re in a situation where the only thing you’re competing with is other garlic mustard, it may be that making lots of this chemical is not a very good idea,” he said.

Thanks to a study of historic herbarium records conducted by co-author Victoria Nuzzo, of Natural Area Consultants, N.Y., the researchers had access to a 140-year record of the age of garlic mustard populations across the eastern half of the U.S. The team collected garlic mustard seeds from 44 locations, grew them in a greenhouse and tested glucosinolate levels in each. Those tests found that older populations – those that have been present in an area for more than 30 years – produced lower levels of the fungicidal compounds than those that got their start less than two decades ago, Lankau said.

Genetic studies suggested that these patterns were the result of natural selection. That is, the plants that produced less of the toxin were more likely to survive and reproduce in older populations.

The researchers then grew the garlic mustard in soil from native woodlands. After a time, they removed these plants and potted native trees in the same soil. The trees did best in pots that had held plants from older populations of garlic mustard, indicating, again, that the plants’ toxin output had diminished over time, killing less of the fungus on which the native plants relied.

To determine if the decline in glucosinolate production was allowing native plants to return to areas previously dominated by garlic mustard in the wild, the researchers turned to a unique data set available in Illinois. The Critical Trends Assessment Program (CTAP) is a
long-term initiative funded by the state Department of Natural Resources and administered by the INHS that monitors the status of plants, birds and insects across the state every five years. The CTAP began in 1997, and so data from the first two sampling periods were used (1997-2001 and 2002-2007)

Because CTAP includes data on plant abundance, including garlic mustard and native plants from across the state, the researchers were able to determine if native plants were declining or advancing in the presence of garlic mustard. Again, they found that older populations of garlic mustard – though still problematic – posed less of a threat to native plants than the newer ones did.

While this study focused on only one plant, the results indicate that some invasive plants evolve in ways that may make them more manageable over time, Spyreas said. This suggests that conservation efforts might be more effective if they focus on the most recently invaded areas, which – in the case of garlic mustard, at least – is probably where the most damage occurs.

This study was funded by the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. The research team also included Adam Davis, of the Agricultural Research Service at the USDA.

Invasive Species Spotlight: Garlic Mustard

Garlic mustard in an exotic, invasive plant that was originally brought the United States by early settlers. It is widely distributed throughout Illinois and can be found in forested areas, roadsides, and ditches.

This biennial plant produces a rosette of dark green kidney or heart shaped leaves with scalloped margins the first year of growth. The leaves emit a pungent odor when bruised. During the second year, the plant sends a 1 to 3 foot flower stalk in mid-spring. This plant is readily identifiable in mid-May in forested areas. Its stems have white flowers in small clusters with 4 petals each. Flowers turn into seeds that fade from tan to black and finally split open by mid-summer.

Garlic mustard is a very dominating plant that can establish quickly and outcompete native plants for nutrients, light, and water. Each plant produces hundreds of seeds that can be dispersed by animals, humans, and even flowing water.

Small infestations of garlic mustard can be eradicated by hand pulling plants during their first year or before seed set their second year. Also, cutting the stalk as close to the soil surface as possible as flowering begins may also be effective. Larger infestations may require chemical applications (glyphosate). Recommended treatments times are late fall or early spring as this is a nonselective herbicide and most other plants are dormant during this time frame.

For more information on other pests found around your home and garden, visit the Home, Yard, and Garden Newsletter.

Garlic mustard educational webcast April 8

Source: Stewardship Network

Garlic Mustard and the Challenge Kick-Off!

Date: Wednesday, April 8th, 2009
Time: 11:45am to 1pm Eastern
Place: Your Computer!

Garlic Mustard is an invasive brought to America by Europeans as an herb. With none of its native competitors to keep it in check, Garlic Mustard has agressively spread to over 30 states and parts of Canada- taking over forest floors, choking out native wildflowers and young trees and creating a serious threat to the health of our native ecosystems.

Last year, the Stewardship Network held its first annual Garlic Mustard Challenge. We set a goal of collectively pulling 100,000 pounds of the plant. Participants reported their pulls to us between mid-April and mid-June. Working together, individuals from across the state and Midwest shattered that goal by pulling 128,470 pounds! The Stewardship Cluster that pulled the most was the West Michigan Cluster, pulling over 28,000 pounds just from their area of the state!

This year, we're setting our sites higher, and our new goal is 200,000 pounds- that's 100 tons! And that's not all that's changed this year...

Join Doug Landis, of Michigan State University's Department of Entomology and Lisa Brush of the Stewardship Network to learn more about Garlic Mustard, the Challenge and what you can do to help fight the spread of this harmful invasive plant.

Click here for more information, including directions on how to join!

Scientists research foreign bugs to help kill invasive plants in Midwest

By John Keilman, Chicago Tribune reporter


Across the Midwest, scientists are fighting an invasion of exotic, fast-spreading plants with imported insects that have one simple mission:

Eat and destroy.

It's an old agricultural tactic known as biological control, used here in recent years to dramatically cut down the scourge of purple loosestrife. Researchers are now looking into new bugs to sic on other plants in the rogues' gallery of Illinois vegetation: garlic mustard and buckthorn.

The insects travel and sustain themselves, so they can be a herbicide-free way to stop marauding plants on public and private property alike. For area homeowners it could mean getting control of their yards without putting down gallons of spray.

But the strategy is not without risk. Some alien insects are only moderately effective while others have become nuisances, chewing up flora they were not supposed to eat and spreading far beyond their intended boundaries.

It leaves even some practitioners of biological control uneasy about the potential consequences of unleashing new waves of miniature mercenaries.

"There's always that apprehension: Things are great now, but what will things be like [in the future]?" said Dan Thompson, an ecologist with the DuPage County Forest Preserve District. "Will something we bring in now haunt us down the road?"

Biological control uses an outsider to beat an outsider. When purple loosestrife, a flowering weed native to Europe, began taking over fields and forests in Illinois, officials turned to an insect that loved snacking on the plant back in the old countries.

Galerucella calmariensis, a tiny brown beetle, was released across the Chicago area in the mid-1990s. Its success was dramatic. The purple tide receded where it had crowded out native species, and plants such as wild iris, Joe Pye weed, blue joint grass and turtlehead began to return.

"There were literally thousands and thousands of acres of loosestrife up here 10 years ago," said Ken Klick, a restoration ecologist with the Lake County Forest Preserve. "And though it's still around, you don't see the monocultures you used to. We're very pleased."

The loosestrife campaign led to plans to take on other Midwestern plagues. The next target on the hit list is garlic mustard.

Imported from Western Europe as a delicacy in the 1860s, the piquant herb gradually spread out of control, covering forest floors like a carpet and smothering already established plants.

Within a year, researchers in Minnesota and New York hope to unleash a German weevil that devours garlic mustard from root to leaf. They've been looking at the bug for a decade, plying it with dozens of other plants to learn whether it might eat anything else.

"We want to make sure the only plant that will be attacked is garlic mustard," said Bernd Blossey, who is doing research at Cornell University.

Scientists have also looked for insects to combat teasel, an up-and-coming nuisance that has blanketed Illinois during the last 20 years. They have found contenders among European fleas and butterflies.

But the king of all plant invaders—buckthorn, an aggressively spreading shrub that starves native species of sunlight—might be the most resistant to an insect assault.

David Ragsdale, a professor of entomology at University of Minnesota who is researching buckthorn's insect enemies, said 50 species tested in Europe were rejected because they eat other vegetation. Meanwhile, the five he brought to his quarantine lab for further study—an aphidlike bug called a psyllid and various caterpillars—aren't voracious enough.

"The insects we've found so far are not exciting from my standpoint," he said. "They don't do a tremendous amount of damage [to buckthorn]."

He's still searching for other candidates, including insects that attack buckthorn found in Asia.

So far, the bugs that have been released in Illinois have been problem-free, but that's not always the case. The most notorious local example of biological control gone haywire is the multicolored Asian lady beetle, a bug brought to the U.S. as early as 1916 and used to control aphids on Southern pecan trees.

With no natural predators in this country—birds don't care for the foul-smelling goo within the beetles—they multiplied quickly, becoming an inescapable annoyance in Illinois and elsewhere.

More serious is the case of an Argentine moth that dines on prickly pear cactus. Australians imported the creature in the 1920s to curb the spread of the cactus, which had been planted as a living fence. The moth worked splendidly, said George Schneider, biological administrator with the Florida Department of Agriculture.

Then other countries started using the moth, and in 1989 it appeared unbidden in the Sunshine State, chewing its way through already rare cactus species. It has since spread west, and agricultural officials fear eco-disaster should it make it to cactus-rich regions in Texas and Mexico.

Researchers are trying to curb its spread by releasing irradiated moths that will mate with the cactus killers to produce sterile offspring, Schneider said.

Experts say biological control will expand as global trade, intentionally or otherwise, brings more invasive plants to the U.S. Some say the risks should be measured against the environmental damage of herbicides and the certain toll of inaction.

"Are you willing to go out every year and cut and cut and spray and spray just to hold the line, or can you look for some solution that lasts for a long time?" said Dave Voegtlin of the Illinois Natural History Survey, which helped to introduce the loosestrife-eating beetle.

"Exotics continue to come in. Our water and soil are just full of them. They're changing the dynamics of our system."

Spread the Word about Invasive Plants

Innocent-looking plants threaten biodiversity


By ALMA GAUL - Lee News Service Writer


Oh, what a pretty plant!

Well, maybe not.

If you are standing in a Midwest forest and find yourself surrounded by a white-blooming plant called garlic mustard or in a Western streambed surrounded by pink-blooming salt cedar, the attractive quality of the blooms is canceled by the threat these plants pose to the environment.

Garlic mustard and salt cedar are two nonnative, invasive species that decrease biodiversity because they crowd out native plants and, ultimately, the wildlife that depends on native plants for food and shelter.

In some respects, invasive plants destroy natural areas just as surely as if those areas had been bulldozed, only in a different way. It is estimated that more than $34 million is spent every year to control invasives, and the costs continue to grow.

Garlic Mustard
Salt Cedar
Q: Why should I care?

A: When biodiversity suffers, ecosystems become unstable, and the balance of nature on which all species depend suffers.

Q: What is an invasive species?

A: Plants that spread from human settings (gardens or farms) into the wild. Once in the wild, they continue to reproduce, displacing native species.

Q: How do these plants get into the wild?

A: Sometimes the seeds are dropped by birds that have eaten berries; sometimes they are wind blown. They also are transported by people. The key point is that while a plant may be very mannerly and noninvasive in your flower bed, it may act altogether different - like a thug - in the wild.

Q: This seems to be a huge problem; are there groups working on this?

A: Yes, quite a few. The North American Weed Management Association, based in Meade, Kan., is a network of public and private professional weed managers involved in implementing noxious weed laws.

Often, local communities form their own groups (Community Weed Management Areas, or CWMAs) to set priorities and coordinate efforts in a given area.

Q: What can I do to help?

A: Don't plant materials in your yard that have become invasive in your area. Just because a plant is for sale at your local garden center - or widely used - does not mean it is safe. In the Midwest, for example, the winged euonymous, or burning bush, is a very popular, widely sold shrub. But its seeds are carried by birds to woods where it often becomes a big problem.


What you can do to control them

Here are a few suggestions for invasive species control:

- If you have an invasive species in your yard, consider removing it.

- Instead of planting "exotic" plants that came from other countries, plant those native to your area. The added bonus is that these plants usually are easier to maintain - they need less water, for example - because they are adapted to your climate's normal conditions.

- Find out whether there are local groups that organize eradication efforts in parks and preserves and volunteer to help pull or cut down these plants.

- Find out whether your area has a Community Weed Management Area and if the group needs any help.

- Avoid transporting seeds of invasives into natural areas. If you are a boater, clean your boat and equipment thoroughly before transporting it from one site to another. If you are a hiker, clean the weed seeds out of your socks and shoes between trips.

- Many people still do not know the damage that can be caused by invasive species.

Spread the word.