Nashville Mustard Tour: a Trace of the Trace

Keen to see Nashville Mustard while it lasts? It only blooms a few weeks each spring, and now’s the time. Why go see it? It’s yellow and gorgeous, it’s a mini superbloom, it’s a good photo op, and a true native. Think of it as a remnant of our historic grasslands, or as I like to imagine: a trace of the Trace. Trace, as in buffalo roads, when bison travelled to the salt lick that “made” Nashville (near what is now Bicentennial Mall.)

This post is to show where the Mustard is, so you can visit your nearest site, or go see them all.
And, it’s a happy update to last year’s post about Cutting the Mustard…

TOUR:
In order of size of spread, the best sites are these Metro Parks:
–Fort Negley (front lawn, and nice patch behind Visitor Center)
–Elmington Park (front lawn on the Elmington side)
–Reservoir Park (a bit near 8th, but the good parts are west, along the Reservoir fence)
–Sevier Park (hill below Sunnyside Mansion, facing 12th Ave. S)
–St. Bernard Park (lawn behind the Osage Orange trees on 21st)

Other locations:
I haven’t checked the Steeplechase this year (Old Hickory and Gaucho) or Madison Community Center, so could someone go look? Also, Harpeth Greenway north and west of Rte 100. Nashville Mustard also shows up at a few exchanges on I-24, and a friend spotted it near the airport at an electric substation. Several older lawns (that do not use herbicides) in West Meade have it.

Nashville Mustard (Paysonia lescurii) is found only in upper Middle Tennessee, and no one in the world sells the plants or seeds.
I’ve gotten permission to collect, and I’ll be working with some mustard-minded folks to figure out how we can propagate plants at home to make more seed. The long-term goal, in addition to helping this Paysonia not become as rare as two other Paysonia species, is to convince someone (?) to grow and supply seeds so locals can add them to their own mini grassland / no-mow-lawn; and so that Metro Parks can re-seed their own dwindling populations.

Lifecycle:
Nashville Mustard is a “winter annual” that dies after the blooms set seed. Seeds germinate in fall, overwinter as basal leaves, and then perk up in late February to get blooms going again.
(Examples of other winter annuals are European yard weeds like chickweed, henbit, and speedwell.)

Terri Barnes told me GroWild inc. had tried to sell Nashville Mustard, but it was a big effort to collect seeds and propagate, and if customers weren’t right there during the brief bloom to fall in love, the plants finished and died, unsold. There was no demand for Nashville Mustard.

Shall we make one? A demand that needs a supply?

Spread the word,
so we can spread the Mustard.

If you take pics, tag them #nashvillemustard #nashvillemustardsuperbloom.

Cutting the Mustard, UPDATE

I’m thrilled to report that Fort Negley is thrilled about their own Mustard. Last year, their superbloom was truly super. We want to recreate this every year: a legit, news-worthy, jaw-dropping, tear-in-the-eye superbloom. But how?
Why is this year’s bloom less intense than last year? I had asked Parks to delay that first mow, and they submitted the order, but did mowers come anyway? Or maybe mowers did delay, which gave other plants (like henbit) more time to set more seed and then crowd the mustard? Or maybe our severe drought affected fall germination?
So far, there are no instructions for how to manage Nashville Mustard in lawn. We are going to create them.

Only plants deemed agricultural weeds or invasive or rare or marketable get studied. Paysonia lescurii is none of those things. There are studies about the rare Stones River Bladderpod (Paysonia stonensis) and the rare Spring Creek Bladderpod (P. perforata), so we can start with those. Both have narrower ranges than P. lescurii, and both do well in soybean fields, but not in corn.¹ Timing is everything. They need “disturbance,” whether bison hooves or heavy machinery, but they need it at the right time, to give seeds a photosensitive period without getting buried by soil.

And they need to be able to bloom and set seed without lawnmowers.

I’m also thrilled to report that Metro Parks has put in orders to delay mowing for ALL the Parks listed on my “tour:” Ft. Negley, Elmington, St. Bernard, Reservoir, and Sevier.

THANK YOU, METRO PARKS!

And THANK YOU to all of you who send me mustard sightings, maps, dropped pins, iNat observations, advice, and offers of help. You are all native habitat heroes.

Another thrill:
Sharron and Roxy, two Board members of Friends of Ft. Negley held the first-ever Nashville Mustard walk last Saturday, and despite the chilly rain, we chatted to many visitors. Sarah’s education poster was a nice touch. They’ve invited me back this Saturday, March 16 to help show the mustard from 11-1. All are welcome.

P.S. If you see insects on the flowers, try to get pics of those too, so we can learn who visits Nashville Mustard. Upload to iNaturalist. We might even find the Mustard Mining Bee / Andrena arabis.

---

Resources:
Link to Metro Parks Finder, here.

SidewalkNature posts:
Cutting the Mustard (2023), link.
Nashville’s Mustard (2017), link.

–Paysonia lescurii info at NatureServe Explorer, link.
-Bison statues on Dickerson Pike, link.
-Friends of Fort Negley, link.
-GroWild, inc. native plant nursery, link.

---

1. Agroecosystem Management for Rare Species of Paysonia (Brassicaceae): Integrating Their Seed Ecology and Life Cycle with Cropping Regimens in a Changing Climate, 2007, Elizabeth A. Fitch, Jeffery L. Walck, Siti N. Hidayati. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4123167 ↩︎

---

More
SidewalkNature:

Follow me on Instagram, where my posts are 100% nature, and most of it the Sidewalk kind.

Subscribe to Sidewalk Nature and get an email when I update. I never share your info.

SUBSCRIBE

For folks not on Instagram, I post nature things on Facebook from time to time.

Comment on this post, or if you have a general comment or question, click the Contact page.
Corrections, suggestions, new friends always welcome.

---

Bio:
Joanna Brichetto is a naturalist and writer in Nashville, the Hackberry-tree capital of the world.
She writes about everyday marvels amid everyday habitat loss at SidewalkNature.com and Instagram (@Jo_Brichetto); and her essays have appeared in Creative Nonfiction, Brevity, Ecotone, Fourth Genre, Hippocampus, The Hopper, Flyway, The Common, The Fourth River, and other journals.
Her book is forthcoming from Trinity University Press: This is How a Robin Drinks: Essays on Urban Nature.