SPICE INVADERS
Nature Conservancy Canada ramps up fight against intrusive — and delicious — garlic mustard plant,
Kristyn Ferguson hates garlic mustard. That’s why she wants you to eat it.
“It’d be great on gnocchi,” she says, pulling a plant from the forest ground. The leaves taste like garlic, and Ferguson swears they’re great in pesto.
But while it makes for zesty pasta, this harmless-looking herb is actually a hostile invasive species that’s been menacing Ontario forests for years.
This year, Nature Conservancy Canada has ramped up its fight against the “enemy” garlic mustard in Ontario’s Happy Valley Forest — which includes spreading the word that it’s “fairly delicious.”
“I want to see people local foraging for garlic mustard,” said Ferguson, a program director with Nature Conservancy Canada. “In another prong in the effort to fight it, we‘re going to make people want to eat it.”
Garlic mustard was brought over from Europe as a culinary herb in the 1800s. But the weed has become an aggressive intruder — it has no natural predators in Ontario, and its roots emit chemicals that hinder the growth of native plants.
“Nothing’s feeding on it. It’s kind of having the time of its life out here,” said Ferguson, at the start of the trail. Left to its own devices, she said, the weed could take over a forest floor.
She said garlic mustard covers a combined dozens of acres throughout the Happy Valley Forest, a lush woodland just 45 minutes north of downtown Toronto in King Township. It’s a threat to the native plant species in the area, said Ferguson, which has ramifications right up the food chain.
Nature Conservancy Canada has enacted a “battle plan” for managing the plant — which includes a lot of good old-fashioned weeding.
There were weekly “pull parties” in the forest this spring, where volunteers filled several garbage bags with garlic mustard. This is also the first year the conservancy has a permanent staff member in Happy Valley Park, largely dedicated to managing invasive species.
Standing in a patch of garlic mustard, Ferguson pulls one up from its roots. It’s kind of addictive, she says, and in a few minutes she’s already filled a bag. Another staff member plans to whip up a batch of pesto that evening.
“It wouldn’t be bad added to a sandwich in the place of lettuce,” she adds later.
The knee-high plants sprout green leaves and tiny white flowers, and bear a pod filled with dark seeds. The leaves have garlicky smell when crushed, and are high in Vitamins A and C, according to the Government of Ontario’s website.
Ferguson urges people to pull up garlic mustard by its roots when they see it, put it in a sealed bag, and toss it in the garbage — or in the pantry. Even removing one plant could mean stopping hundreds of seeds from spreading, she said.
Nature Conservancy Canada helps protect more than 780 acres of the Happy Valley Forest, one of the biggest remaining deciduous forests on the Oak Ridges Moraine.
On Saturday morning, a group of about 20 met for a free public hike through part of the forest, called the Goldie Feldman Nature Reserve. Dragonflies circled overhead, and the sun beamed through a towering deciduous canopy.
In a few decades, parts of the forest will be “old growth,” filled with 200year-old maples, beeches and oaks, and a rich undergrowth of fallen logs. These old growth forests are rare in Ontario, Ferguson said, and make incredible habitats.
Ferguson led the enthusiastic pack of hikers, pointing out monstrous maples, monarch butterflies, and “disappearing streams” that bubble in and out of the ground.
She shared tricks for identifying trees by their bark (red oak looks like burnt hotdogs; American beech trunks like an elephant leg) and we patted the soft needles of a baby pine. On the edge of a meadow, the group spied a 300-year-old sugar maple — it took three adults to fully hug the trunk.
Naomi Loeb, who lives in downtown Toronto, had never heard of the Happy Valley Forest until this hike.
“I think it’s really important people know there are areas like this so close to the city,” she said. “Most of the time all you hear about and experience is how congested it is, and how crowded it is.”
Near the end of the trek, Ferguson spotted a large fallen log, covered in fungus and moss, and home to a plethora of bugs and animals. It’s these dead trees that make an old growth forest so rich and diverse, she says. Eventually, there’ll be many more here.
“It almost ceases being a tree and becomes something else.”