The colonization of this plant is a real disaster on many levels. Its impacts are numerous and the problem only grows a little more each year. Visit this site for japanese knotweed identification.

Ecological impact

This is undoubtedly the most important because of the colonization power of this plant. Indeed, the Japanese knotweed reduces the competition around it so much that it ends up making disappear a large part of the endemic fauna and flora of the place concerned. Depletion of biodiversity is therefore both important and destructive for the ecosystem. Click here for japanese knotweed identification.

As an indication, you can divide the biomass (quantity of species present) of invertebrates in a knotweed massif by four compared to the same massif composed of willows and other bank plants. On a larger scale, this decline in natural resources has a direct impact on the food chains that are often atrophied by this lack of biodiversity. Some bigger animals are just as concerned because they are at the top of this food chain.

In the event of invasion, almost all native species are eliminated by excessive competition and the man sometimes helps to speed up the process. This is particularly the case for invasions in the forest because the felling of some trees reduces their direct competition on the knotweed , which further promotes its development.

This is what we can see in this picture where many trees have been cut, weakened, they will not be able to grow again! (in favor of the knotweed).

Impact on human activities

Agriculture also suffers enormously from this scourge that is the knotweed of Japan. Once its proliferation found at the edge of a cultivated plot, the troubles begin:

– The plant, insensitive to many herbicides, will sooner or later become resistant as it is treated,

– The plowing of the earth where knotweed begins to develop, only propagates vegetative fragments and encourages the invasion.

Impact on the landscape

Man has been making the landscape for decades, but a shadow appears on the table as soon as Japanese knotweed begins to settle in a particular place, even if the visual impact is less serious than the impact on the landscape, environment.

It is largely the size and proportions of this plant that completely destroys the entire history and visual of certain landscapes.

However, on a woodlot and the other bare, the visual influence of the knotweed once installed is not at all the same, but the ecological damage will be more important in the sense that many species are still present.