Garlic Mustard

Garlic Mustard (Alliaria petiolata)

Cabbage Family

aka hedge garlic, Jack-by-the-hedge, poor-man's mustard, sauce-alone

Click on picture for larger version.

Habitat:

Hedge rows, woodland verges

Taste:

Mild Garlicky

Attracts:

Midges, hoverflies and Orange tip butterfly.

Flowers:

April-June

Culinary uses:

Young leaves for salad, garnishes and flavour additive for mayonnaise, salad dressings, sauces and soups.

From Culpeper's Complete Herbal and English Physician (abridged)

COMMON HEDGE-WEED; GARLIC HEDGE- WEED; WINTER HEDGE-WEED.
(SAWCEALONE, or JACK BY THE HEDG)
Description. Common and winter hedge-weed are often indiscriminately taken for hedge-mustard, and that without much fear of making any fatal mistake, as either possess similar virtues, as well as resemblance; and flix-weed, resembles these much in the generic character.
The roots of either is long, white, and woody, and furnished with many fibres. The stalks are round, firm, upright, of a pale green, or purplish; they grow two feet and a half high, and not much branched. The leaves of the first are long, pointed, and notched at the edges; but of the winter hedge-weed they are broader, thicker, more deeply indented, and rounder. Their colour is a pale green, and they have a bitter taste, as has also the pith within tile stalk. The flowers are small and yellow, and the seed-vessels are long and slender, and squared: they stand in a kind of spikes along the upper part of the stalk, when the plant has been some time in flower.
Garlic hedge-weed, or as some foolishly call it, Jack by the hedge, has all the taste of the former, but the general appearance is somewhat different, for this has smaller white flowers and rounder leaves, of a finer green, and not so rough at the edges, not so much resembling wormwood or southernwood as those do; but the seed-vessels are the same shaped, and the seed looks the same.
Place. They are common upon waste places, which have been over-run with water; the fens in the Isle of Ely, in Cambridgeshire, and in Derbyshire, produce them abundantly.
Time. They are sometimes in flower in April, and sometimes not till September.
Virtues and Use. They are martial plants, hot and astringent; the juice, or a strong decoction, is good to stop effusion of blood in a very safe and happy manner. The seed, which is the best part that is used, is drying and binding, of service in all kind of fluxes and hæmorrhages, either from the bowels, or any other part; they help the incontinence of urine, and the making of bloody water. They are also alexipharmic, and good in pestilential fevers; they resist poison, and the bites and stings of venomous creatures.

View the original Culpeper text here (under S for SAWCEALONE)

Seed pods. Click on picture for larger version.