Is this a native plant, or an invading weed?

15 years ago

Here's a shot of some ground cover in the woods on my property. I live in St. Michael, MN, about 45 minutes northwest of Minnespolis.

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I've been reading about garlic mustard invasions on several different forums here, and I never looked up what it looked like until yesterday. I recognized it! I just noted some this spring because I hadn't seen it in previous years. We just got rain last night, so this morning I was out uprooting all of it I could find. I had a couple fairly large stands of it on the edge of the woods. It was choking out Maple and Ash seedlings and native ground cover. From what I hear, it can very quickly choke out a whole area, so I was careful to get all of it on my property and now I have a really good radar for it. I'll probably have nightmares about it tonight :)

So anyway, now I'm paranoid about exotic species of weeds coming in and killing my forest. I see a lot of this stuff around this year:

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Is this stuff native or is it also an invading exotic? The only reason (other than my new paranoia) for suspecting it is because it seems more prevalent this year than previous years.

And as long as it got in the picture, can anyone ID this fern?

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Comments (9)

myrtle_59
15 years ago
I don't know what fern that is, I can tell you some it is not, lol.

That is not garlic mustard though or not what we call garlic mustard down here.
myrtle_59
15 years ago
Sorry, now I see you do not mean that is a picture of garlic mustard.

For some reason I want to say toothwort but that is a wild guess.
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anitamo
15 years ago
Not sure what the fern is...maybe Ostrich...a spreader. The other one looks like hydrophyllum. Here's a link.

Here is a link that might be useful: hydrophyllum
Iris GW
15 years ago
I think the fern is Ostrich (Matteuccia struthiopteris) also.

In the close up picture of the unidentified item, is that some sort of flower bud or seed case?
myrtle_59
15 years ago
It does look like the flower bud of waterleaf. I looked at water leaf all day today, lol, but ours is the kind where the leaf is lobed more than divided and looks sort of like a maple leaf instead of box elder.
gomanson
Original Author
15 years ago
Thanks for the link to hydrophyllum. I think that's what it is, and I'm glad to see it's native.

esh ga, yes that's the flower bud cluster in the picture. I think they get small white flowers, which makes sense if it's hydrophyllum.
arcy_gw
15 years ago
I have this all over the place, here in Hutchinson MN. I was told by my boss, the greenhouse garden center owner, it was a wild geranium, a NASTY weed, the roots are a web and tough to get through. I let mine flower, I see yours is about to, mine is just beginning, then I go through and pull all the green out so it doesn't compete for moisture with my hostas all summer. It hasn't "taken over" anything and it has not moved to my lawn so I tolerate it. A year or two after I clear a new area it appears and can go crazy. So it is a native but invasive or desireable...it is up to the beholder.
myrtle_59
15 years ago
The picture is not wild geranium.
ladyslppr
15 years ago
The photo shows a Waterleaf, which are native and not a geranium. Yours look exactly like mine, which are virginia waterleaf, although there are several other species and I can't be sure you don't have one of those instead. They do spread in the right conditions, but I don't find them to be a problem.