It’s Spring and flowers are beginning to bloom in the back yard. Flowers provide one of the easiest ways to identify a plant. I now know two of the plants that are filling up the woodlot by name. One has a yellow flower with four petals and a yellow-orange sap when cut. It’s Chelidonium majus.
Chelidonium majus
The other plant is Garlic Mustard or Alliaria petiolata, a member of the Mustard Family.
Garlic Mustard
Wikipedia describes both as aggressive invaders (and both are non-native to the US). Garlic Mustard, though edible, prevents other plants for using the same soil by releasing chemicals that prevent the growth of fungus needed by most other plants. Chelidonium can be used to remove warts, but isn’t edible.
We decided to remove both species from the grounds.
In so doing, I discovered a third species of plant living there: Poison Ivy!
