I was assuming japanese knotweed. That stuff is worse than just invasive, it getting loose, so much as a single plant getting loose is an environmental disaster. There is fucking loads of it near me (within walking distance, thankfully not actually in the vicinity of my home, or even neighborhood, but near enough to harvest it if I wanted to.
There is one use for it though, IIRC it contains resveratrol, I've been considering harvesting the aerial parts before it begins to flower, just the canes and leaves, pulping it all down, and, after using something like HDPE or steel pipe, build a dirty great giant soxhlet and copper coil condenser in order to extract it. Would be doing the environment a favour if nothing else, if just by helping to starve it of resources, taking everything its put into growth away with the harvests, making sure its not even in flower, let alone seeding, and building a BIG soxhlet (I do have a normal glass one, but I mean, building something that can hold 50lb or so of material, after running it through a blender, and before throwing out the refuse, burning the dross to ashes to ensure it cannot spread because of anything I've done. Soxhlet-wise, I'm thinking kind of like the big stills used by breweries, those aren't glass but copper, something that can be built cheaply and run on a small cottage industrial type scale for the resveratrol, with the soxhlet to allow for a minimal quantity of solvent to be used for extracting as large a quantity of biomass as possible and as such, waste as little as possible and leave me needing to redistill as little as possible used solvent for recycling.
Might as well put that awful plague in botanical form to some use, and help starve it as much as possible where it grows.
I'm surprised your neighbors haven't been beating a path to your door with pitchforks and flaming torches to be quite honest, since even one plant present within a distance of a few houses away can easily be enough to make a home unsaleable, to make it impossible to get insurance or a mortgage on the nearby properties, and generally speaking, at least in a lot of countries its actually illegal to allow it to grow (and even more so to deliberately plant it, or even just fail to make a concerted effort towards its extermination. Its on an international list of the 100 worst of the worst noxious invasive species (plant, animal and others all put together) and rightly so, your courting a major ecological disaster growing that foul plague. I would be PISSED if I found out somebody had an infestation of knotweed, of any sort growing on their property on the same street as my house and had done nothing to exterminate it with extreme prejudice. Growing it is worse than just irresponsible, there really are no words to adequately describe how stupid and dangerous knowingly growing it deliberately is.
Totally get the invasive knotweed fear, my friend!
I have tamed, domesticated knotweeds (BTW, I am sure I mentioned that mine are not even the same genera as those you and I both fear and loathe) that are only just barely not kind, but they are so beautiful to grow! These that I grow are completely infertile and never make seeds. That is the real problem with the Fallopia genus. It is not a hybrid and the seeds are fertile, even after many years of dormancy.
I grow none of those. All I grow are infertile hybrids which can not possibly produce viable seeds to become invasive at a later date.
Trust me. I know a bit about this shit.
Now, want to talk about tiger stripe mussels? How about Kudzu? Water Hyacinth?
I am with you dude! I know a bit about this shit, as I have already stated.
I can only affect my own living areas, so growing native plants to seed and recognizing them when the are in seed, stopping along the highway every time I can and "terrorizing" crap plantings of weak highway department efforts with seeds of wild flowers that can barely survive Indiana winters and summers and over seeding those areas with native things that are proven to thrive and that
will thrive along the side of the road and in parks and county walkways is one of my crimes.
I sometimes have pockets full of native seeds I have gathered when I go biking (Dicentra, Thalactrum, Aquilegia, Alliums of many sorts grow here, Monarda, Rudbeckia, Acers of several species, Ratibida, Trillium- I keep most of these for myself, but they are times when everything comes to bear and there are just too many to keep - then there are things that I am not so sure of the Proper Latin names such as very prolific tulip poplars, bean trees, honey locust tree, name any oak or maple or hickory or walnut or sycamore or elm all happy here and NATIVE - seeds are free- , cohosh, Poke salad, yarrow (I do know that one is Achellia but is is also medicinal, so a different part of my mind works to propagate those as best as I can) bloodroot, sumac, various fern, though they take up to ten years to germinate, but should I not spread spores? NO. ) I may have to admit to being a planting "Johnny applefuckwad Seed" terrorist. I never ... well, enough said, I think.
I hope you can accept that I am more responsible than what you may have tried to indicate in your first response to me about a knotweed, obviously posted while your heart was bleeding and your knee was jerking.
I went through much of this thirty years ago. That is why I gather seeds of native plants all summer and distribute them in places of overly (Hu)manned management.
