"Kim" wrote in message
...
We've got something growing out back that I'm trying to identify before
chopping it down.

I live in the Northern panhandle of WV. What the plant / flower looks
like:

The plants are currently 1 to 2 feet tall. They have clusters of small
white
flowers, approx. 1/8" in diameter, a few inches from the top of the plant
only.

The flower has 4 petals and yellowish 'centers'. The flowers are either
"arranged" around a bunch of little nubby things, or else the ones I see
now
are not fully flowered out and these are immature flowers that will later
open
up.

The most curious thing about the cluster of flowers I picked off is that
the
central cluster on the top of the stem has little "arms" going up from the
stem
to alongside the flowers. I can only describe the appearance of this as
"looking like a menorah" with the flowers clustered on what would be the
center
"candle" of it.

The leaves are pinnate and have slightly sawtoothed/dagged edges.

You have rather precisely described the European-origin invasive known as
garlic mustard - Alliaria petiolata.

http://webapps.lib.uconn.edu/ipane/j...ifier=uconn_ip
ane_alliapetio_08

That's a picture of it. I live where you do (western slope of Blue Ridge,
near Harpers Ferry), and it's popping out in the oak forest understory right
now. At the front of out lot, I'm trying to extirpate it and make way for
expansion of my Virginia bluebells (now three years old and splendid this
spring), and a new planting of partridgeberry, which looks like it has about
a chance in a zillion of surviving. ... Despite the garlic mustard, we do
also have an efflorescence of Spring Beauty (Claytonia virginica),
Cut-leafed Toothwort, and Rue Anemone in the same woods.