In article ,
Tim Watts wrote:
On 20/08/14 13:57, Malcolm wrote:
Well, I know which I would rather have in terms of diversity. Willow,
blackthorn, gorse and brambles offer a great deal more diversity for
food, nests, shelter, etc., to birds, butterflies, bees, small mammals,
etc., than "a mass of R. ponticum"?

And the kids who might have played there are now nicking bits off your car.

There's plenty of diversity overall for the wildlife - one hilltop won;t
kill them.

R. ponticum has been a native plant in the past, and there are lots
of other plants that establish uniform stands but are not demonised
for doing so. The issue is whether something will eliminate whole
ecologies, over most of their range, and not whether an individual
area will turn into a uniform stand.

There is little doubt that R. ponticum will do that to SOME of the
ecologies in SOME parts of the UK, but its fanatical opponents
claim that it will do it far more widely than is justified by the
evidence. It needs a fairly high rainfall and a neutral to acid
soil, which is why it is a serious problem in the west and a
negligible one in most of the limestone and chalk areas and east.

Also, most people forget just how new, man-made and mutable Great
Britain's ecological landscape is - the establishment of a new one
is neither unusual nor harmful in itself. To repeat (as I will be
misrepresented, anyway), there is strong evidence that it is a
danger to other ecologies in the west, and to isolated examples in
some other places.

I have many times asked R. ponticum haters to point me in the
direction of hard evidence for its harmfulness away from the west,
and the invariable response has been references to their own
polemic and unsupported claims that mere occurrence is harmful
(i.e. pure prejudice).


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.