Mariton: Garlic Mustard, Some Perspective

by Tim Burris, Preserve Manager

I recently posted about our Garlic Mustard Removal project and featured a photo with a truck load of the stuff.  I talked about how much less garlic mustard is at Mariton nowadays, and how wildflowers are spreading.  It was a few days later that I realized I needed to add some perspective, because a truck load is a lot of garlic mustard.

Garlic Mustard from the Chimney Rock Trail – 2007

The above photo was taken in 2007. It was the second year that we seriously worked at removing garlic mustard from Mariton.  The three young ladies were in high school, and took on removing garlic mustard at Martion as their Senior Project.  They are now women with their own careers, but still talk about the two weeks that they worked here.

Garlic Mustard from the same area – 2019

To give you perspective the truck load that they pulled was from an area on the Chimney Rock Trail from the bottom of the trail to the Fox Trail. That is about 800 feet of trail.  The small pile above is what I pulled this week, when I worked in the same section that they did in 2007.  Yes, there are still some pockets that produce a lot of garlic mustard; however, we have almost eliminated it from the majority of the forest and trails.   As I said in the earlier Field Note, this is one of the success stories related to removing invasive plants.