In John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids is presented the ultimate invasive species. So hostile is it to human life that following a public health disaster the plant simply takes over. I believe some people get to live out a siege future on the Isle of Wight at the end of the novel. It ain’t happening quite so quickly with Himalayan Balsam, but nevertheless I do believe that we are in trouble. There seems to be more of it than ever, this summer.
Ah yes, some good old Impatiens glandulifera, a.k.a. Himalayan balsam, our friendly local invasive weed which has taken over entire swathes of northern England; if you see this bastard growing anywhere near you, you should kill it — though apparently ripping it up just makes things worse, which is helpful. So don’t ask me how, maybe nobody knows which is why, soon, it will have taken over the entire island and I guess we’re just going to have to learn to eat it.
Looks nice? It isn’t. This is Himalayan Balsam, Impatiens glandulifera, introduced into the UK by some Victorian gentleman who, if he was still alive, should be made to crawl around the country stuffing the consequences of his marketing opportunity up his bottom. This is the major invasive weed around here, possibly even the biggest local environmental problem we have right now. I’d say ‘if you see this plant kill it’ but apparently the expert advice is that even that might just make it worse (as if it were a hydra, or something). The only answer seems to be to develop a taste for eating it — which no other UK species has yet managed, hence the problem.
Being 42 