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Asparagus is a perennial herb that provides edible, above ground stalks during spring. While asparagus grows wild, those plants did not end up along roadsides and field edges by someone planting one-year-old asparagus crowns, but by seeds being carried and dropped by birds.

A Dodgeville woman was surprised to see a three-foot asparagus stalk in her perennial flower bed recently.

She couldn't imagine her garden asparagus spreading a hundred feet from her garden and then growing so quickly.

But like many plants, asparagus has two ways it can spread and reproduce and one of those ways is with seeds that develop inside a small, red berry-like fruit.

All asparagus plants produce flowers if we let them grow tall enough, but half the plants produce only pollen flowers, the other plants produce flowers that produce fruit with tiny seeds inside. The red berries are attractive to birds.

Garden asparagus beds increase by the roots spreading and by seeds dropping and growing into new plants.