In article ,
Martin Brown wrote:
On 24/09/2019 12:30, Jeff Layman wrote:

Japanese knotweed is actually seriously invasive. Although I recall from
my youth that there seemed to be a less invasive cultivar growing in the
Victorian garden of a big house I used to play at. A stand of it still
persists in a nearby park. The big house has long since been demolished
and all its land built on. I would never advocate planting it, but I
think the risks it poses in a garden are being a little overhyped.

Japanese knotweed is a serious problem but, as far as I can discover,
is the ONLY land plant which is more than a local nuisance. What the
bureaucrats and English nationalist botanists don't say is that almost
all of the UK ecologies are made up entirely of recently invasive
plants. And, despite their dogmas, most distinctions between native
and introduced plants in the UK are ecologically meaningless, and
some are definitely scientific crap[*].

There is a HELL of a difference, ecologically, between merely invasive
plants and those that exclude all others. And only Japanese knotweed
falls into the latter category over most of the UK, with Rhododendron
ponticum and possibly Himalayan balsam doing so in a very few locations.
I have never seen Montbretia do that, but it might in even fewer
locations.

The same is not true for waterweeds.

Schedule 9 has been abused by bureaucrats to introduce completely
ridiculous rules.

Montbretia doesn't like soggy conditions or hard frost, which is why
it grows where it does in the wild. In other parts of the UK, it's
not even invasive.
[*] The most extreme I have seen are the bullace/beech distinction,
and Russell lupin, but there are innumerable others that are classified
by pure speculation.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.