There is a British couple abroad who have worked hard for many years and finally have their own house.
However, the appearance of a plant destroyed their efforts.
Its root system can be drilled out of cement slabs or brick crevices, shaking its foundation.
They did everything they could, and they couldn't root out the grass.
Because of the presence of this plant, their house was quickly judged to be a "dangerous house".
This caused the house, which was originally estimated at £305,000, to plummet by almost 80% immediately.
And this plant that can drive people crazy is called Japanese knotweed.
It is listed by the IUCN as one of the 100 most dangerous invasive species in the world.
As a "fighter" for invasive plants, it became the most terrible nightmare for the British.
It is even creepy that some people choose to commit suicide because they are overly worried about its existence.
According to the British "Daily Telegraph" report, in March 2014, a 52-year-old British man Kenneth suddenly went to extremes.
He first killed his wife using a perfume bottle and then committed suicide.
Yes, his suicide note expressed a deep fear of Japanese knotweed.
The Japanese knotweed, which the British feared, was native to Japan.
In addition, they are mainly distributed in China, North Korea and other eastern regions.
It is a genus of knotweed in the family Tateshina, belonging to the three major knotweed genera.
From the appearance point of view, the appearance of Japanese knotweed is outstanding among plants.
Its stem is a bit like bamboo, looking stout but empty inside.
The difference is that it has a distinctive longitudinal edge as well as dazzling red spots.
If you look closely, its leaves take on the shape of a heart.
Coupled with the white fringed inflorescence, it makes people fall in love at first sight.
Because of this, it was introduced to Europe as an ornamental plant in the 19th century.
Sure enough, this peculiar plant is quite popular with Westerners.
In 1847, the Dutch Agricultural and Horticultural Association named it "the most interesting and novel ornamental plant of the year".
Three years later, the Royal Botanic Gardens in London received plant samples from Japanese knotweed.
Many Britons began to plant this plant with a fresh energy.
People think about what they don't like after planting, and it is not impossible to just throw it away.
What they don't know is that behind Japan's beautiful appearance is the baptism of suffering.
This creates their tenacious vitality and reproductive ability.
You know, in the beginning in Japan, they grew near volcanoes.
We can see that the rhizome of Japanese knotweed is very small and can be easily destroyed by the harsh environment.
In order to live well, Japanese knotweed developed the ability to root deeply
When it arrived in the flat land of England, it continued to take root in the depths with worry.
Because there is no resistance, it extends to more than 3 meters deep underground and more than 7 meters horizontally, and can survive in low temperature conditions.
A Japanese knotweed researcher in New Hampshire has discovered the terrible thing about this plant: "Some Japanese knotweed show that it looks like a separate plant, but underground, they have formed a terrifying root system that spreads to 2880 square meters, equivalent to the size of half a football field...."
The British, still fascinated by the appearance of Japanese knotweed, can find that there is a dark force spreading underground.
However, they soon realized that something was wrong, because the growth of Japanese knotweed was too fierce.
In less than a month, it was able to grow to more than a meter tall.
If left unchecked, it will soon grow to more than 3 meters tall.
And the ordinary plants planted around it have also died because of its "tall and mighty".
The British, who had come to play, suddenly panicked and quickly removed the Japanese knotweed.
Just as the so-called asking the gods is easy to send gods, japanese knotweed is not only not what you want to get rid of, but also began to take the initiative to dominate the invasion of the territory.
In addition to the unusually developed root system mentioned above, Japanese knotweed is good at loosening soil.
Whether it's an asphalt or a cement foundation, it can penetrate and drill straight out.
Its well-developed root system then gradually widens the cracks, causing damage to buildings such as houses, roadbeds, and embankments.
Image credit: Horton and Garton
What is even more frightening is that Japanese knotweed has a strong reproductive ability, incorporating both non-sexual and sexual breeding methods.
Studies have pointed out that the knotweed that invaded the British Isles is most likely self-propagation from the same mother.
In addition, they do not only rely on seeds to propagate, but also on rhizomes.
As long as there is a very small rhizome root system underground, a large knotweed can grow.
Or wait until the conditions are right to grow back.
The unbridled growth of Japanese knotweed was soon regarded by the British as a flood beast.
Although Japanese knotweed itself is not dangerous to humans, it can also be eaten and medicated in China.
But it will "overbearing" the living space of other plants, thus affecting the animal food chain and bringing disaster to the ecosystem.
Seeing the impact of Japanese knotweed on life and ecology, the British government certainly can't sit still.
To kill them by hand, they must be uprooted and destroyed by the entire root system.
They tried every means to cut the roots of knotweed, but with little success.
According to the UK government, the cost of controlling knotweed reached £1.25 billion in 2014. At least a dozen different active control methods and herbicides have been used.
At the 2012 London Olympics, it cost more than £70 million to clean up Japanese knotweed around London Olympic Stadium.
It has been predicted that the total cost of eliminating knotweed throughout Britain will be as high as a few billion pounds.
But the researchers also believe that there is no guarantee of complete success.
So the British government was once overwhelmed by the power of knotweed and said it was powerless.
Seeing this, some people may ask why it can grow reasonably in Japan and China.
The reason is simple, Japan and the Eastern countries are distributed with the natural enemy of Japanese knotweed: a special aphid.
This aphid, also known as a wood lice, is a specialized sap-sucking insect.
It is highly specific, and simply sucking on plant sap can severely weaken the morphology and vitality of Japanese knotweed, thus achieving the purpose of controlling their number.
It is precisely because the British do not have this aphid that Japanese knotweed grows so brazenly.
As a result, the British government has also introduced aphids for biological control.
We know of this method of introducing predators into invasive species, often referred to as biological control or control.
Speaking of this, we can't help but think of the infamous species invasion accident in Australia.
At that time, Australians introduced European hares, and then it became a flood.
In order to hunt rabbits, they also introduced the rabbit's natural enemy, the European fox.
Unexpectedly, foxes not only ate rabbits, but also began to eat kangaroos, so that they still failed to maintain the balance of the biological chain.
Happily, the natural enemy of Japanese knotweed, the aphid, does not cause harm to other plants.
Unfortunately, aphids have not had the expected success in the UK.
Scientists speculate that part of the reason is that local flower bugs have eaten the eggs of aphid larvae, reducing the number of natural enemies of Japanese knotweed.
It is worth mentioning that the British people creatively invented a Weapon of the RootWave.
In simple terms, it works by using electricity to generate heat and dry out the moisture inside the grass, thereby killing knotweed.
But even with the existence of this "high technology", Japanese knotweed is still invincible and continues to rage.
As a result, the tragedy of the collapse of house prices in the United Kingdom has also been staged, and many mortgage institutions in the United Kingdom have refused to mortgage the real estate deposited in knotweed.
In fact, with the exception of the United Kingdom, they crossed the sea at about the same stage and invaded other European countries.
The United States, Russia, Canada and other countries have listed knotweed as an important invasive weed.
Take the United States, for example, which first invaded the Great Lakes region and then spread to the Pacific coast in the northwest. More than 20 states have been invaded by Japanese knotweed.
It is not appropriate to say that once Japanese knotweed finds an opportunity, it will spread like an infectious disease in European countries.
In fact, invasive plants such as Japanese knotweed have become one of the important causes of biodiversity around the world.
The State of the World's Plants 2017 report states that as of 2017, there were 6,075 invasive plant species worldwide.
China is also one of the countries most seriously threatened by the invasion of alien plants, and the economic losses caused by it are as high as hundreds of billions of yuan every year.
I believe that many people did not expect that the invasion of foreign plants in China was so serious, right?
When you want to cultivate some beautiful exotic flowers and plants, please pay attention to whether they are invasive plants and avoid serious consequences if you are not careful.
After all, most of them do not "control" house prices in developed European countries in a high-profile manner like "Japanese knotweed".
*References
Reynoutria japonica.wikipedia. on 20 June 2019, at 12:27 (UTC).
https://slate.com/technology/2019/05/japanese-knotweed-invasive-plants.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3761534/Invasion-alien-knotweed-Despairing-family-t-sell-home-monster-door-grows-eight-inches-day-damages-foundations-grows-brickwork.html
https://www.catersnews.com/stories/latest-news/man-who-murdered-his-wife-before-committing-suicide-because-of-japanese-knotweed-could-not-have-been-stopped/
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