Heart-shaped, toothed leaves and small white four-petalled flowers on a hedge-bank plant that smells of garlic when crushed
Garlic mustard — jack-by-the-hedge.
Nature · Wildflowers & flowers
Garlic mustard
Native · flowers Apr–Jun · shady hedge banks, woodland edges and waste ground
Alliaria petiolata — Brassicaceae
Garlic mustard, or jack-by-the-hedge, is a tall biennial of shady hedge banks with heart-shaped, toothed leaves and clusters of small white four-petalled flowers. Crush any part and it smells of garlic, which is the test that separates it from look-alikes. It is the main food plant of the orange-tip butterfly.
How to spot them
- ▸Broadly heart-shaped, stalked, coarsely toothed leaves, often crinkled, on stems reaching a metre or more
- ▸Clusters of small white flowers with four petals (crucifer cross) at the tops of the stems
- ▸The whole plant smells strongly of garlic when crushed
- ▸First-year rosette leaves are kidney- or heart-shaped and can be mistaken for violet leaves — the garlic smell separates them
- ▸Slender seed pods, long and angled, follow the flowers
How to know it
The main caterpillar food plant of the orange-tip butterfly along shady hedgerows
Garlic mustard.
Its seeds were once taken like snuff to cause sneezing, and the leaves went into sauces for fish and lamb
Garlic mustard.
Country people used this crucifer in sauces, with bread and butter or in salads, and it was called 'sauce alone'
Garlic mustard.
Young rosette leaves of this biennial resemble violet leaves in shape, but crushing them releases a garlic smell
Garlic mustard versus the violets.
A member of the cabbage family that flowers April to June and is still very common throughout the UK
Garlic mustard — of least concern.
Quick-fire facts
- •Family Brassicaceae (cabbage/mustard family); Alliaria means 'like Allium' (garlic), petiolata means 'having a leaf stalk'
- •Plantlife: flowers April to June throughout the UK, most common in England and Wales; of least concern
- •Grows over a metre tall on fertile, moist soils in shady hedgerows, waste places and open woodland
- •Food source for the caterpillars of the orange-tip butterfly
- •Used in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century sauces for fish and lamb; also called jack-by-the-hedge and sauce-alone
- •The seeds were taken like snuff to cause sneezing
- •It is a serious invasive weed of woodland in North America, where it was introduced
- •A biennial: rosettes in year one, flowering spikes in year two
Drill it — 7 cards
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Sources
- Plantlife — Garlic Mustard