PORT ANGELES — Until he saw it on television, Chuck Sheaffer didn’t know he had a killer in his yard — one apparently new to the North Olympic Peninsula.
That innocuous bit of greenery with delicate, white four-petaled blooms growing at his home at Finn Hall Road in Port Angeles looked just like a murderous European invader featured on a King-5 television program that aired April 27.
Sheaffer dug up the small plant and took it to the noxious weed control coordinator of Clallam County. Kathy Lucero confirmed that the yard plant was garlic mustard, a Class A invasive species that crowds out native plants and poisons the soil so that nothing else will grow.
And although the plant is pervasive in parks in King and Snohomish counties, Sheaffer’s plant is the first she’s seen here.
First appearance
Lucero said that, so far as she knows, this is the weed’s first appearance in Clallam County and perhaps in the Peninsula.
“This is brand new to my knowledge,” she said.
She said it was probably the first plant in the North Olympic Peninsula, “definitely in Clallam County.”
Jefferson County’s 2009 noxious weed list lists in bold type weeds that have been found in the county. Although included on the list of plants to watch for, garlic mustard is not in bold type.
The state Noxious Weed Control Board lists the plant on its Web site, www.nwcb.wa.gov/index.htm, as having limited distribution in King and Snohomish counties.
“I just thought it was a pretty uncommon thing,” Sheaffer said. “I was glad I’d watched that TV show and was alerted to it.”
Garlic mustard, whose scientific name is alliaria petiolata, is a biannual that can grow up to 3 feet high, Lucero said.
Not innocent
“It looks innocent enough,” she said. “But it’s allelopathic — it puts out chemicals and kills the organisms in the soil that keep native plants alive.
“It’s pretty nasty.”
The plant probably was brought to the United States from northern Europe for food or medicinal use, Lucero said.
The National Invasive Species Information Center Web site, www.invasivespeciesinfo.gov/, which is operated by the federal Department of Agriculture, says that the fertile, fast-growing plant was first introduced to the United States in the 1800s and has since spread throughout the eastern states, Oregon and Alaska.
The Washington state Noxious Weed Control Board listed garlic mustard as a Class A plant in 1999.
It has been “going wild in King County,” Lucero said.
The television program that Sheaffer saw addressed efforts to eradicate the plant from Golden Gardens Park in Seattle.
“They think it started there from zoo compost,” Lucero said. “It’s in a lot of their parks. It likes the shady woodland areas.
“There’s been a lot of news about this plant,” she added. “I’ve been hoping we wouldn’t get it.”
Class A weed
A Class A noxious weed is one that must, by state law, be eradicated. The goal for Class B or C weeds is to control their spread.
“Garlic mustard is difficult to control once it has reached a site,” the state noxious plants Web site says, describing the plant as “self-fertile,” meaning that one plant can produce seeds and begin an infestation.
“It has a high seed production rate, it is short lived, it out-competes native vegetation with early spring germination and it can establish in a relatively stable forest understory,” the Web site says.
If found, the plant should be pulled out and reported to the county noxious weed control coordinator.
Sheaffer said he plans to be “ever-vigilant. If we can keep after it, it won’t come back here.”
In Clallam County, Lucero can be reached at the noxious weed control office at 223 E. Fourth St., Port Angeles; 360-417-2442; clucero@co.clallam.wa.us.
In Jefferson County, contact Eve Dixon, coordinator, at the noxious weed control office at 201 W. Patison, Port Hadlock; 360-379-5610, ext. 205.
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Managing Editor Leah Leach can be reached at 360-417-3531 or leah.leach@peninsuladailynews.com.
