England. 1825. The Scene; A large commercial glasshouse of a well known importer of exotic flora and fauna.
Temple Lushington 'not very capable' Brown, of that well known dynasty of Landscape Gardeners, but much removed from the genetic stream by a few forays by his illustrious ancestors behind the potting shed with female assistants, sat nervously in the lobby of the Horticultural Emporium.
His career was in tatters after some disastrous attempts to remodel parts of Berkshire and Hampshire for their Gentry Landowners. His Ha-Ha's were considered laughable, Follys percieved as foolish, Gazebo's not worth a second look.
He was desperate to steal a march on his competition by securing the next best thing before it became known as the next best thing.
There had been a whisper in the grass that this establishment had taken delivery of an exotic shipment from the Orient. Tatler Magazine , that must for the Victorian Parlour, had run a feature on all things Japanese in the home and garden and the response from the well-to do in the Home Counties had been phenomenal. Large landed estates, smaller country manors and town house gardens had sprouted with the ephemera of Japan in statues, water features and coloured gravels interspersed with coarse but colourful grasses and miniature shrubs.
The Importer of Plants looked a bit flustered. He had been called down to the delivery bay of the Glasshouses to witness a disturbing sight. A sole crate of plants from the far East had exploded under the pressure of a gargantuam growth only minutes after being delivered by the horse drawn dray from the Docks. The manifest had listed only one species, fallopia japonica, supposedly an ornamental plant likened to bamboo but not closely related. Given the likely packaging of the crate during the Japanese Spring and the passage aboard the Peninsular and Oriental freighter from east to west ,this pointed to a phenomenal growth rate of, on the basis of a rough calculation, 3 imperial inches a day, even allowing for the inhospitable and inhibiting growth conditons inside a dark crate.
Perhaps the arrival of Temple Lushington Brown was fortuitous for the rapid sale and removal from his premises of the crate.
It was.
A deal was done to the distinct advantage of the Importer emphasising indeed the reputation widely held in the realms of Horticulture that T.L Brown Esq was rather stupid.
The unique selling point as far as Temple was concerned was the range of wonderfully evocative colloquial names for the newly acquired plant. He could see good mileage in his catalogue for the marketing of the Pea Shooters, Elephant Ears, Monkey Weed and the comic sounding Donkey Rhubarb. His self adjudged shrewdness in business would elevate his plant product to a level of frenzied interest which would knock Common Ragwort, Giant Hogweed and Himalayan Balsam into the compost heaps of the well to do, as if, that is they knew what a compost heap was given the levels of domestic servitude in the period.
Heady expectations for the species were more than outstripped by subsequent sales and the plant soon graced many a garden in the Home Counties as both an attractive, tall and late autumn flowering clump and a talking point on it's prolific growth and spread through one's grounds from the initial planted border.
T L Brown had made his fortune and gratefully retired from the high pressure world of horticultural engineering.
Meanwhile, gardeners were instructed to keep an eye on the Donkey Rhubarb and cut it back if it appeared to be out of control. They enthusiastically did this but any machete'd stems or foliage just germinated willy nilly wherever the offcuts were deposited.
The next request from worried owners was to pull the whole plant out altogether. This proved difficult as the roots were found to stretch some ten feet below the surface and with a sub-terranean spider-web spread of around twenty five feet. Removal by naked flame in a scorched earth approach, conventional poisoning by herbicide and frantic pulverising by hand did not really solve the growth problem.
Rumours that the young spring shoots could be cultivated and eaten and therefore marketed as a potential income stream fell on deaf Elephant Ears.
Overnight the plant took on the image of a demon. Groundskeepers and custodians of gardens, once proud professions , resorted to nightime tactics of mass excavations of roots and self germinating stems. Carts and wagons groaned under the sheer weight of vegetation and accompanying soils and debris.
Under cover of darkness the transports wound their way to remote areas on the edges of the developing towns and cities to return empty but with a tell tale trail of dry earth marking their sorry journeys.
The Fallopia Japonica,when not actually in annoying view left the consciousness of the public. New fashions emerged in the form of pampas grass, eucaplyptus, domestic rhododendron and every miniature of fruits trees. Things Japanese became jaded and a bit nouveau riche. It was as if the eradication of the plant had been wholly successful.
Footnote; The World Conservation Union has listed Fallopia Japonica as amongst one of the world's most invasive plant species. In the 1981 Wildlife and Countryside Act in the UK it became illegal to intentionally spread the plant beyond a controllable extent. The plant, whilst hardy enough to grow through building foundations, concrete paths, floors and emerge triumphantly in auditoriums and living rooms has been susceptible to herbicides and recent trials have indicated that spraying with seawater can also serve as an inhibitor. The presence of the plant on building sites, most notably the London Olympic complex, has cost millions to tackle. Imagine the diplomatic backlash and sheer embarassment to the UK, as a nation, if Usain Bolt, on sprinting clear to the line in the 100m final became entangled in and legged up by Japanese Knotweed forcing its way up through the tartan running track. In its native country, Knotweed is not a problem mainly because it has natural predators in the insect world. There are proposals for the introduction of the small Aphalara itadori insect into the UK to directly attack the Japanese Knotweed as a non-native bio-control. This is all very well but what uproar there would be when the first crate of the insects arrives on these shores only to burst open from the pressure of a gargantuan growth and with the freakishly large creatures scuttling away carrying anything and anyone away in their oversized sap sucking mandibles.
(first published as Weed Science on 11.11.11)
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