In the 1700s, when Spanish Padres were building El Camino Real, the trail down the state of California, connecting all the adobe Indian missions, they envisioned a street of gold.
They brought in black mustard seed from their familiar Mediterranean, and sprinkled the seed along the way, as they traveled up and down El Camino Real. Black mustard being the source of mustard seed, and also the leaves are very similar to kale when cooked. When the plants bloom, they erupt across hillsides with the brightest sunny yellow imaginable. They thought this fit for The King's Road.
Black Mustard has now become an extremely invasive species in California. I spent pretty much my entire childhood digging and ripping out carpets of roots from the inland high desert clay hardpan. One after another after another, hundreds, thousands. So dense did it grow, it was as if one was digging up grass, one stalk after another.
The roots are deep, woody, and thick. If you miss any part of the root, the mustard will grow back with a thicker and hardier stalk. Control is a full time, whole family job. You wake up in the morning and pull weeds. You go to work or school. You come home and in the cool of the evening, you pull weeds. The weekend is a time of pulling weeds, with one day of rest.
Eradication must be done in the winter or spring. Because by midsummer, the mustard all dries out creating a hundreds of miles long trail of gray tinder for fire season. It's not much, but locally the best one can do is to eradicate it on their property, and encourage the neighbors to do the same.
Scientists can even track the exact year that mustard was planted along different stages of El Camino Real, by analyzing the adobe bricks in each of the missions. The lower, older bricks contained traces of native seeds and grasses. And then inside the bricks made in the mid 1700s and later, suddenly the mud bricks are full of traces of mustard seed and chaff.
To be fair, black mustard is a beautiful and delicious plant. The leaves can be stir fried and used like kale. And I remember joyfully picking great bouquets of the bright yellow blossoms every year, as a little girl, sitting in the shade weaving crowns of them, and also presenting vases full of the blooms to my mother and grandmother.
But whether or not it is a pretty or useful plant, it is a great pest in California. Completely displacing the delicate Native California flora in favor of its carpets of gray brown dried invasive brush.
El Camino Real, The Royal Road connecting the California Indian Missions, where the mustard was first sown:
Some of the Spanish Missions of California. :
Winter/Spring, oh what a paradise. But do you see any native species in with the invasive monoculture? :
Summer/ Fall, the mustard has dried out into an endless carpet of fire tinder:
They brought in black mustard seed from their familiar Mediterranean, and sprinkled the seed along the way, as they traveled up and down El Camino Real. Black mustard being the source of mustard seed, and also the leaves are very similar to kale when cooked. When the plants bloom, they erupt across hillsides with the brightest sunny yellow imaginable. They thought this fit for The King's Road.
Black Mustard has now become an extremely invasive species in California. I spent pretty much my entire childhood digging and ripping out carpets of roots from the inland high desert clay hardpan. One after another after another, hundreds, thousands. So dense did it grow, it was as if one was digging up grass, one stalk after another.
The roots are deep, woody, and thick. If you miss any part of the root, the mustard will grow back with a thicker and hardier stalk. Control is a full time, whole family job. You wake up in the morning and pull weeds. You go to work or school. You come home and in the cool of the evening, you pull weeds. The weekend is a time of pulling weeds, with one day of rest.
Eradication must be done in the winter or spring. Because by midsummer, the mustard all dries out creating a hundreds of miles long trail of gray tinder for fire season. It's not much, but locally the best one can do is to eradicate it on their property, and encourage the neighbors to do the same.
Scientists can even track the exact year that mustard was planted along different stages of El Camino Real, by analyzing the adobe bricks in each of the missions. The lower, older bricks contained traces of native seeds and grasses. And then inside the bricks made in the mid 1700s and later, suddenly the mud bricks are full of traces of mustard seed and chaff.
To be fair, black mustard is a beautiful and delicious plant. The leaves can be stir fried and used like kale. And I remember joyfully picking great bouquets of the bright yellow blossoms every year, as a little girl, sitting in the shade weaving crowns of them, and also presenting vases full of the blooms to my mother and grandmother.
But whether or not it is a pretty or useful plant, it is a great pest in California. Completely displacing the delicate Native California flora in favor of its carpets of gray brown dried invasive brush.
El Camino Real, The Royal Road connecting the California Indian Missions, where the mustard was first sown:
Some of the Spanish Missions of California. :
Winter/Spring, oh what a paradise. But do you see any native species in with the invasive monoculture? :
Summer/ Fall, the mustard has dried out into an endless carpet of fire tinder:
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