Today eight troop from the SBS (Special Balsam Service) bent their backs and vanished into the undergrowth on a search and destroy mission vis a vis Himalayan Balsam.
Three back breaking hours and umpteen sackfuls later and there is still HB everywhere. Its almost like an invasive weed. What am I saying, it IS an invasive weed.
Two weeks of this and the troops are revolting ( pause, wait for inevitable joke), so next week they will take a week off and doing something else ). I also will take a week off (so they have a double bonus) and go up to London instead (Mark Knopfer - Albert Hall). I must remember to avoid any parks or places where HB grows, don’t want to be done for despoiling the Buckingham Palace gardens.
Himalayan Balsam ( impatiens glandulifera) is an interesting plant. An annual, with distinctive red veined leaves and large pink flowers, it can grow 2 meters in a single season. When pollinated the plant produces explosive seed pods capable of scattering up to 2500 seeds per plant over a five meter radius.
And this is the problem, the large flowers out compete native species for the attention of pollinating insects and the multitude of seeds soon produce seedlings that blanket the ground. So for these reasons it is classed as a noxious weed and conservationists spend many hours pulling it up. Fortunately this is not difficult, for such a large plant is incredibly shallow rooted.
Interestingly the plant is in fact edible, both leaves and seeds but this fact should come with a government health warning. The plant should not be eaten if you suffer from - a list of ailments as long as my arm - so best not try just in case!
daveb
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A bumper turn out today. Unfortunately most of the increase was in welcome guests not new members. We welcomed Hannah back to finish what we abandoned on the April workday, Greg has a new carer and his Home Centre Manager also came along to see what all the fuss was about. In addition we had Stuart a new volunteer. All in all eleven volunteers visited the Community Orchard where we cleared the grass around the base of the fruit trees and soft fruit bushes as requested by SGCC. We also scouted for and cleared Himalayan Balsam in this area. We have now scouted and cleared HB from the Primrose Bridge to the Orchard (that is not to say we haven’t missed some but at least it’s a start). Many of the trees are in bloom and the gooseberry bushes are bearing fruit (no babies underneath tho’).
Today the Green Gym team followed the route taken by the main conservation group on Saturday. We were to make sure no rubbish had been thrown back in or missed. Well nobody can miss a supermarket trolley so we assume yet another of Tesco’s finest has gone swimming. We also looked for the first signs of the arch enemy. That’s right Himalayan Balsam. With ruthless efficiency we uprooted every plant found. Of course that leaves all those not found but fear not the first pink flower that shows itself and it’s toast (actually it’s uprooted HB). We shall not rest until the reserve has been cleared of this scourge, and then the country, and then the world. Except for the Himalayas of course.