We have about a half acre of Wild Garlic Mustard growing in our back yard. We have been told that it is a nasty weed that is hard to eradicate. And that we need to get rid of it because it chokes out native wild flowers.

We have tried over that past four years to get rid of the stuff but have failed in our attempts. We have chopped it, and pulled it but it just seems to keep coming back.

Someone suggested that we use Round Up on it, which isn’t an all bad idea. With Round Up, we could easily spray the stuff in just one Saturday afternoon. The only thing is that we would put the other good plants in jeopardy. In particular, we could damage our beautiful crop of wild Wood Phlox.

Every May, our back yard is awash in purple from the blossoms on these beautiful wild flowers. And while the aroma may be a little over powering at times, it only lasts for a few weeks so we can live with that.

The problem at hand is getting rid of the Wild Garlic Mustard without harming the Phlox. While selective chopping doesn’t seem to work and pull by hand poses an unacceptable consumption of time, Round Up might work but it would need to be sprayed very carefully.

While we knew that the Wild Garlic Mustard is a biannual, which stays green year round, we did not know just exactly what a Phlox is. So, I went out on the internet to check them out.

What I learned is that Phlox are a perennial and that they have a five petal, purple blossom. Well, while our Phlox mainly have purple blossoms, they also have some that are pink and some that are white. But wait, our Phlox must be some variant from the norm as they only have four petals on the blossoms.

Upon further research on Phlox on the Internet, I learned that we do not have Phlox at all. Instead, the plants that we have enjoyed for the past 20 years are Dames Rockets.

This would explain why we have not been able to identify our plants in the native wild flowers books.

Dames Rockets are not indigenous to North America. They were brought to North America from Europe by early settlers. And, they are a member of the Wild Garlic Mustard family and considered by many to be more invasive than the Wild Garlic Mustard. In fact, the Department of Natural Resources in some states, have asked hikers to pull any Dames Rocket plants that they see in the woods.

Now, we have a dilemma. It appears that we have a backyard that is full of weeds. And by rights, we should eradicate them all. But, for the sake of principle, do we eliminate the beautiful flowers in our back yard because they immigrated to this country many years ago? Some how, it doesn’t seem right.

Could we say the same for illegal immigrant workers?