[APWG] woodiness in garlic mustard?

[Pyle, Charlotte - NRCS, Tolland, CT]

There is mention of Garlic Mustard growing as an annual, biennial, or perennial in Europe.
http://www.hort.uconn.edu/cipwg/invader_month/invader_of_the_month_Mar06_alliaria.pdf

I have not observed it in perennial form in Connecticut.

  -cp
Charlotte Pyle, PhD
Landscape Ecologist
USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service
344 Merrow Road
Tolland, CT  06084

phone:  (860) 871-4066
fax: (860) 871-4054
email:  charlotte.pyle at ct.usda.gov
www.ct.nrcs.usda.gov/plants.html

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-----Original Message-----
From: APWG [mailto:apwg-bounces at lists.plantconservation.org] On Behalf Of David Schimpf
Sent: Thursday, May 23, 2013 2:37 PM
To: APWG at lists.plantconservation.org
Subject: [APWG] woodiness in garlic mustard?

In late April I found a single garlic mustard plant having two woody
stems arising from a woody root.  This was in the far northeast corner
of Iowa, surrounded by normal herbaceous garlic mustard rosettes.  The
woody stems are each about 23 cm long and 8-12 mm diameter, fully
suberized.  They were in a somewhat reclining position in the field.
Each woody stem bore at its tip a large congested mass of leaves, all of
which had the more rounded blades typical of the rosette stage.  There
were some smaller dead stems attached just above these terminal leaf
clusters of these large stems, which had remnants of fruits that had
dehisced.

The plant was pulled out and moved to our university greenhouse, where
it is potted. The leaf cluster on one woody stem died, but the other
survived.  A new herbaceous stem grew from the base of the stem on which
the terminal leaves died, but has stayed short and vegetative.  Three
stems with the more triangular cauline leaf blades have grown from the
tip of the stem that has the surviving terminal leaves, and started to
flower/fruit in the past week.  A fourth flowering stem grew from below
the soil line.

I am wondering if others have encountered garlic mustard like this.
Might this be herbicide-induced?  One of the two woody stems is
conspicuously flattened, and the other is terete.

I'll send a photo to individuals who request it.

--
David J. Schimpf
Associate Professor of Biology
Director, Olga Lakela Herbarium
University of Minnesota
Duluth, MN  55812-3004 USA



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