PORT ANGELES — So far, a lone garlic mustard plant found on Finn Hall Road seems to be the only representative of the invasive weed in the North Olympic Peninsula.
Kathy Lucero, Clallam County noxious weed control coordinator, thanks residents for paying attention and encourages them to stay vigilant.
“So far, there’s been no garlic mustard elsewhere,” other than the plant found by an alert homeowner on Finn Hall Road last month, Lucero said.
“It would be great if we caught the only plant.”
A story in the Peninsula Daily News last week about the first known appearance on the Peninsula of garlic mustard — a Class A invasive weed — prompted a flood of phone calls and plant samples to her office, Lucero said.
“People have been bringing in plants like mad,” Lucero said Friday. “Stinging nettles, mints — but so far, none have been garlic mustard.”
Garlic mustard is a European native that crowds out native plants and poisons the soil so that nothing else will grow. The state Noxious Weed Control Board listed it in 1999 as a Class A invasive weed — meaning that it must, by law, be eradicated.
It is pervasive in King and Snohomish counties but had not been found in Clallam or Jefferson counties before the Agnew homeowner, Chuck Sheaffer, recognized a garlic mustard plant growing in his yard after watching a KING-5 television program on efforts to eradicate it from Golden Gardens Park in Seattle.
Inundated with calls
Since the PDN report, Lucero’s office has been inundated with calls,” she said.
“We’ve had tremendous response. People are just calling all over the place.”
One of the inquiries was from out of county, she said. A man living on Mercer Island asked her to check property he owned on Finn Hall Road.
Several people took plant samples to Lucero’s office.
“People are bringing in plants that they thought were garlic mustard, but they were just another kind of mustard,” she said.
Jefferson County’s noxious weed control coordinator, Eve Dixon, said that she received only one inquiry about mustard weed at her office.
“So far as I know, we don’t have garlic mustard in Jefferson County,” Dixon said Wednesday.
Dixon, who was in Clallam County on Monday, said she checked three reported possible sites in Port Angeles that day.
“All turned out to be money plants, also known as silver dollar plants,” Dixon said.
King County’s noxious weed education specialist, Sasha Shaw, said that once established, garlic mustard is difficult to root out.
“It is great that they found this plant so early out there,” Shaw said in an e-mail. “Maybe it can be stopped from spreading into the Peninsula now. I just hope this is the only place that has it out there.”
New species creep in
Lucero said that new species continually show up, carried onto the Peninsula from elsewhere by machinery or other means.
European hawkweed, another invader on the state’s Class A list, was found west of Lake Crescent in 2007, Lucero said.
It had been known to live in Canada and King County, but “we don’t know how it got here,” she said.
Hairy willow-herb, a Class C invasive weed, was first discovered in Clallam County in Carrie Blake Park in Sequim last summer.
Plants on the state’s Class B list must be controlled. Those on the state’s Class C list can be controlled if county authorities feel it is beneficial to do so because, for instance, it endangers agriculture.
The hairy willow-herb was found by a group of Master Gardeners that Lucero refers to as her “weed-catchers.”
Members of the group take photographs of plants and give them to Lucero to examine.
The more who are watching for invaders, the better, Lucero feels.
For more information and photographs, see the state Web site at www.nwcb.wa.gov/ or the King County Web site at www.kingcounty.gov/environment/animalsAndPlants/noxious-weeds/weed-identification/garlic-mustard.aspx.
Those who think they have sighted the plant can reach Lucero at the noxious weed control office at 223 E. Fourth St., Port Angeles, 360-417-2442, clucero@co.clallam.wa.us, or Dixon 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 at leah.leach@peninsuladailynews.com.
