How scary is the Alien species of "Plants vs. Zombies" that gives the British a headache

A British couple is determined to sell their house, but when the agent gives them an estimate, the house price inexplicably plummets by 80%. Most of the houses around them are priced at £305,000, but only £61,000 is offered to them, or about 553,000 yuan.

Not because the agent was making a blind valuation, but because there was a lot of Japanese knotweed growing around the house, which simply made the British couple sad and could not sell. The house is small, if there is a safety hazard, it is a big deal, they have tried a lot of methods, even if they use high-efficiency herbicides, there is still no way to cut the roots of the flooded knotweed.

Over time, these knotweeds that emerged from the cracks under the cement slabs on the ground of the house affected the foundation of the house, so the old couple's house became a dangerous house, the price also fell greatly, and they could only sell a piece of land money.

In Britain, people have been dominated by the fear of Japanese knotweed for many years, and a journalist named Henry Grappa has a dream: he dreams of having a small garden of his own, full of all kinds of beautiful flowers, he admires the flowers every day, and he can drink afternoon tea when he has nothing to do.

But the little garden of his dreams was ruined by a small plant that looked unremarkable, but it had extremely strong fecundity, and in two months, Henry's dream of Zi Yanhong was gone, and what occupied his sight was a green Japanese knotweed. This knotweed is three meters tall, the stem is thicker than a coin, and the leaves are very large.

What made Henry even more helpless was that the spread of knotweed was so fast that it not only destroyed his small garden, but even invaded the yard of his neighbor's house. How do so many knotweed grow in their own yard? Henry began his "knotweed removal plan", he cut first and then pulled out, the result was not good, he also tried to dig a large pit in it, laid a very large layer of thick plastic, the result is useless, knotweed can still grow out quickly.

In desperation, Henry took out his own killer, the glyphosate herbicide, and he injected a powerful herbicide into each rhizome. When he was confident that he could completely eliminate these knotweeds and restore his little garden to its original state, he never expected that the herbicides would not work, and the grasses would still grow wildly, and they could even sneak out of the concrete to show Henry their powerful vitality.

Not only was Henry exposed to knotweed, but according to the BBC, in March 2014, a 52-year-old British man was forced to commit suicide by knotweed, he was so extreme that he was overly worried that knotweed would invade his yard, so he first smashed his wife with a perfume bottle, and then committed suicide himself. How did the knotweed, which endangered so much, spread to Britain? This begins in the distant 19th century.

It is said that there is a man named Philip Franz von Siebold, who came to Japan with the East India Company, and as a foreigner, his activities in Japan are still subject to many restrictions. Although he is a doctor, he has loved to explore since he was a child, and he is often active in various places, he is interested in the flowers and plants of Japan, and he has traveled to various places to collect a variety of plants.

Suddenly, one day, near a volcanic crater, he found a large piece of beautiful plant, that is, knotweed, and he brought the living bodies of these plants back to Europe, and after returning to Europe, knotweed was taken by Philip to the horticultural exposition in Utrecht, the Netherlands. He began to vigorously promote knotweed to the people around him, and the exhibited tiger's green leaf powder stems and small white flowers were called a good look, which was very much in line with the aesthetics of Europeans at that time, and they even called knotweed "kind flowers".

Philip can be said to be very active in the sale of knotweed, he introduced to the people around him the advantages of knotweed, what can be medicated, can be ornamental, can prevent wind and sand fixation, can maintain water and soil, can be used as cattle feed, and even as food, anyway, what to say, in his eyes, the current knotweed is called a perfect creature, in addition to the advantages or advantages.

The exhibition was a perfect advertisement for Japanese knotweed, and in 1850 he sent a Japanese knotweed to the Royal BotanIc Gardens in The Kew Gardens, and since then this famous botanical garden has become the first victim of the knotweed invasion.

The small botanical garden could not close the heart of Japanese knotweed yearning for freedom, and had taken Kew Garden as a starting point, using their own beauty as a means, the horticulturists and contractors who came to Kew Garden were obviously seduced by the little goblin of knotweed, who brought knotweed to all parts of England, and since then a Pandora's box called knotweed has been opened, and with the help of floods and winds, Britain is slowly shrouded in the shadow of knotweed.

The life force of knotweed is extremely tenacious, the growth of that is called a fast, a month of rubbing can grow to a meter high, the highest can grow to about three meters, knotweed branches and leaves grow very luxuriantly, racing against the clock to grab every ray of sunlight, far away looks like a green airtight wall, more importantly, the penetration of Japanese knotweed is called a strong, see the green plants growing on the cliffs, we will be amazed by the tenacity of its vitality.

Knotweed, on the other hand, can drill through cracks in cement slabs or bricks, and relies on its strong and powerful root system to widen the cracks, eventually causing damage to the building. The British, who were deeply affected by it, did not admire the strength of knotweed, but cried bitterly and hated it. The root system of knotweed is very large, and it can go down to more than five meters underground, and on both sides it can extend to more than seven meters long, which makes it difficult to be pulled clean.

If it is not pulled clean, it can carry out an incubation period of more than 20 years underground, just to find a chance to break the concrete and see the sky one day, if you want to completely eradicate it, you must use an excavator to dig it deep. Knotweed is still an amphibian plant, even if it is in the water, he can spread on the water, the invincible tiger Zhang in the United Kingdom has a real ability, as an invasive plant to reproduce unhappily is simply a disgrace to the face of the invading creature.

The general methods of plant reproduction are divided into two types: sexual reproduction and asexual reproduction, which is simply that they can reproduce through female, male, pollination, fruit, seed, or through self-replication. But knotweed is not the usual way, both breeding methods are required, and it can switch freely between the two modes.

In order to find out how knotweed, a grinding little goblin, reproduces, biologists at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom also collect knotweed from different places tens of kilometers apart for testing, and the final results show that their DNA is actually exactly the same! Knotweed, which is found throughout The United Kingdom may have come from a mother, and it is possible that all the Japanese knotweed in England was cloned from the knotweed that Philip brought back to the Netherlands.

Not only will they clone knotweed, but they will also "marry" other plants, they will "talk about marriage" with indigenous plants similar to themselves, and then hybridize new subspecies, which will pollute the local species genes.

The reason why it has spread so quickly in Britain is due to the British climate, which is quite suitable, there are no natural enemies, it may be hardmode to grow somewhere else, or even hell mode, coming to The UK, it is almost like a simple model, accounting for LinkedIn minutes.

In the Uk, there are knotweed grown houses that are going to be a big price reduction, not only the old couple we mentioned at the beginning, there are many Britons who have encountered things because of the cheap sale of knotweed houses, whether you are paved with cement or marble, whether it is asphalt or square bricks, it does not work in front of Japanese knotweed, give it a gap, you can occupy your entire courtyard.

Nowadays, buying a house in the UK, first look at whether there is knotweed around the house, so the house price of the house affected by it has dropped by at least 10%, and even the British banks will not mortgage the properties affected by the knotweed. Knotweed destroys houses, crops, etc. every year, costing the UK at least $230 million a year, and even spending $2.5 billion to treat it to prevent it from expanding.

The British took pains to eliminate knotweed, and in the case of the 2012 London Olympics, they spent £70 million to clean up the knotweed used in the venues, most of which was spent on treating the soil. The level of soil they treated was in accordance with the standard of nuclear waste disposal level, and they even spent a lot of energy sifting through the soil around the venue, afraid of leaving the root system of knotweed.

However, the 70 million pounds eventually became a one-time expense, and the next year the knotweed came out along the cracks in the ground, which was really "wildfires burning endlessly, and spring winds blowing again". There is also knotweed in our country, although there are slight differences with Japanese knotweed because of the different growth environment and way, but there is no reproductive isolation problem at all, and after hybridization, it can also produce offspring, and between the 8090s, you may have eaten small snacks made of knotweed.

In the summer, peel off the red-spotted skin of its stem and you can drink the sour, spicy, flavorful juice of knotweed. In our country, knotweed can also be used in medicine, such as what "Qianjin Fang", "General Record of Saint Ji", "Shenghui Fang", "Compendium of Materia Medica" have a record of the medicinal value of tiger fighting, dampness and yellowing, detoxification and detoxification, dispersion of bruising and pain, cough and phlegm can be found.

In our country, there is no need to worry about the flood of knotweed, because there are many natural enemies on the mainland, more than 30 kinds of insects, led by wood lice, each of which is a master of sucking knotweed juice, and there are six kinds of fungi that can cause knotweed disease and inhibit its growth. Hearing that the mainland and Japan have natural enemies that suppress knotweed, the British can't sit still, they immediately introduced wood lice to the country, they thought that the wood lice would show their might, killing knotweed without leaving a piece of armor, but the reality is that priests will eat knotweed, but it will also eat other food.

In this strange land of England, the wood lice may have found a delicacy that is more in line with its heart than knotweed, and has long forgotten the knotweed to the cloud nine and abandoned it. Now the British people use the most biological agents, spraying the right drugs on the tiger tent until he dies, and then taking advantage of his illness to kill him and destroy its root system.

However, this method still cannot be used on a large scale, and it seems that the road to British governance of knotweed is still a long way to go.