The original Stinking Benjamin

My appologies! For the last 4 days I've been at two different conferences, and so have been a wee busy. More regular blog postings are starting again tomorrow!

Species name: Trillium erectum

Common name: red trillium, wake-robin, stinking Benjamin

Location: Nova Scotia

I took this photo while out with Tanya on a guided excursion of an area in Nova Scotia called Cape Split. Felt like a walk up a mountain carrying the pack mule with all of its stuff, to be rewarded with a beautiful view of the Bay of Fundy. Once we were done absorbing the view we started our (incredibly short) trek back down the "mountain", only to find out that the walk wasn't all that long at all! The red trillium is native to Eastern North America, especially the Maritime provinces.

Most of the 40-50 species in the Trillium genus are at risk of population decline across their entire range. Despite this, there is only one species that is protected by law in Ontario against picking since it is officially a threatened species and has a greatly reduced population size. The common white trillium, the provincial flower of Ontario, is only prohibited from being picked in Provincial and National Parks, and on land owned and controlled by a Conservation Authority. In the United States, it is illegal to pick trillium flowers in Michigan, Minnesota and New York. This isn't because it's a threatened species, it's because picking the flower prevents the bracts and leaves from making sugars to be stored for the next year's growth. This impedes the growth and reproductive abilities pretty severely of the trillium. The white trillium is also the state flower of Ohio, and the official government emblem of the Ontario Government. Like the Jack in the Pulpit plant, the trillium is characterized by having flower parts and leaves in multiples of three: three petals, three sepals, and three leaves. This makes the plant trifolate, and a monocot.

Red trillium flowers are definitely not suitable for picking for the dinner table. A dark red-purple colour in flowers often indicates that they will smell terrible, like rotting meat. This implies the flowers are pollinated by animals attracted to rotting meat, usually flies. Like another native Ontario wildflower, bloodroot, the seeds of the red trillium are dispersed via ants (called myrmecochory). The ants are attracted to the fruit of the flower because of the fleshy elaiosome that surrounds the seed. This elaiosome contains lots of lipids (fats) and proteins, which the ants use as a rich source of nutrition. Once the ants have consumed the elaiosome, they transport the seeds into their disposal chambers underground where they can germinate the next spring and grow into a new trillium plant. Despite this complex association between trilliums and ants, these plants rarely actually reproduce sexually via their seeds. Like many of the spring wildflowers that I've blogged about so far, trilliums have rhizomes that store nutrients for the plants to use to grow the next spring.

To my knowledge, there is no medicinal or nutritive benefits (either perceived or actual) of consuming specifically the red trillium (although, there are stories about other species of trillium having medicinal value in preventing and treating bloody diarrhea). It contains calcium oxalate crystals in a special form called a raphide, which would make the plant toxic to consume by humans. The crystals can perforate the intestines and cause ulcers. Plus, I don't imagine they taste very good!

A mustard for all seasons

Species name: Alliaria petiolata

Common name: garlic mustard, Jack-by-the-hedge, garlic root, hedge garlic

Location: Ontario

Garlic mustard is an invasive plant in Ontario, originally from Europe, and central and western Asia (it was brought to Canada with European settlers in the 1860s for culinary purposes). It is a biennial plant, meaning it takes two years to complete its life cycle. The first year it spends growing large, round leaves (like in the photo above) as well as storing resources underground in its storage taproot (like a carrot). The next year a new stem grows, elongating as flowers mature. The fruit it produces are long seed pods, which are somewhat elastic and release seeds through an explosive mechanism when they are mature.

In its native habitat, garlic mustard almost exclusively grows near hedgerows and in ditches (and is not invasive), hence it's British common name of "Jack-by-the-hedge". When young, the leaves smell quite intensely of garlic when crushed and so that's the origin of it's common name (and it's in the mustard family). A traditional use of garlic mustard when young is as an "exotic" salad green, but make sure you use it sparingly--it does have quite a strong taste. In the second year of growth the leaves are much smaller and so not as easily picked to eat. The taste also changes quite a bit from year one to year two, and I haven't heard of any instances of people picking leaves from the second year of growth for culinary uses. It was once used medicinally in Europe to disinfect wounds (which probably worked to some degree; any plant that has a very strong odor likely has at least some antimicrobial capacity) and as a diuretic (if this is also true, another good reason not to eat a lot of it in one sitting!).

An invasive species in Biology is a species (usually a "foreign" species, but not always) that can out-compete native species for resources and completely takes over a habitat. Garlic mustard is an excellent example of that: very rarely do you see a plant growing by itself, and where you have dense garlic mustard growth you have very little of any other kind of ground cover. The unfortunate part of this scenario is that it has almost completely eliminated suitable native habitat for the White Trillium, the provincial flower of Ontario. This flower is becoming more and more rare as time goes on, only existing in great numbers in small pockets in Ontario and elsewhere. To confound this, deer also preferentially eat trillium when given a choice between that and garlic mustard, so they're not only assisting in the removal of trilliums in Ontario forests, but also helping the garlic mustard "live long and prosper," as Trekies would say.

So how to control garlic mustard? Well, the short answer is you can't. Because it's a biennial plant (and the growth forms between the first and second year look so different), if you don't pull it out in the first year it WILL come back the second year. Once it flowers, the seeds are so successful in the environment that the population explodes on a localized scale, meaning the population can grow exponentially every year. There are no chemical methods that can be used on these plants, as anything that kills garlic mustard will also likely kill all of the native wildflower species and new shrub or tree growth. The only real solution until we come up with something better is to pull them out by hand. If you choose to take part (or start) in a garlic mustard eradication program (which you should!), make sure you're pulling as much of the root system out of the ground as you can, and if the plant has fruit make sure you do not disturb them and disperse seeds. I have seen people walk around with kitchen shears and three garbage bags inside each other to cut the flower heads or seed heads off the plant first, then pull it out of the ground. Perhaps a bit of an over-kill, but better to be safe then sorry!