Family: Brassicaceae
High Risk Traits:
- Broad climate suitability (able to grow in >5 hardiness zones)
- Can grow in tropical climates at higher elevations
- Widely naturalized
- Weedy in gardens and cultivated settings
- Agricultural weed
- Potentially allelopathic
- Can poison livestock if consumed in large quantities
- May be an irritant to humans and potentially toxic if consumed in large quantities
- Tolerates many soil types
- Seeds dispersed intentionally by people (but rarely seeds)
- Able to spread vegetatively and from root fragments
- Can reproduce in one growing season
- Able to resprout after cutting and tilling
Low Risk Traits:
- Despite weediness, long history of cultivation and use by humans for food
- Unarmed (no spines, thorns or burrs)
- Provides fodder for livestock (palatable despite reports of toxicity)
- Possibly Shade-intolerant
- Rarely sets seed
- Lack of seed production limits dispersal capability
- Herbicides provide effective control