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Comment by temp0826 | Hacker News Reader

>> Other invasive species being sold include Japanese barberry, Chinese privet, whitetop, Norway maple, Brazilian peppertree, Russian olive, garlic mustard, yellow star thistle, Canada thistle, kudzu and Johnsongrass, among others, the study states.

Part of me wants to plant a garden containing all of these to see which one wins

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Different weeds have different strategies. There is one that specializes in wildfires (cheatgrass): it has a large root system and burns very easily, so it "awaits" to be burned: no one but their root system survives the fire, so it can grow out quickly again after the fire.

Based on driving through lots of rural NC, SC.. kudzu will win. Hands down.

Whichever one wins, you and your neighbors lose.

Careful you don't get arrested for running a plant-fighting ring.

Throw English ivy in there too

Unkillable.

My (late) parents had all sorts of ivy in their garden for about 40 years (that I know about) with few problems. Ivy is great for birds - home for insects for them to eat, berries to eat too, and places to nest.

Ivy may be great, but if it isn't native then it can be bad for the local ecosystem. I've got some in my backyard and it smothers everything else except the pine trees (and even those three ivy would eventually take down) I just finished removing the blackberries. The ivy is next and then maybe the holly

Mum and Dad had ivy, blackberries and holly. It all seemed to work out OK for them. And other smaller plants like borrage and grape hyacinth. But of course, YMMV. And it was a big garden.

My street is lined with Norway Maple and barely any seedlings at all come up.

The Siberian elm next door and oak down the street end up with many more seedlings in the yard than the maples.

I can see it being a different situation in a yard adjacent to a stand of more natural trees though.

Some Norway Maple cultivars are more invasive than others. The main problem with them though is that they release allelopathic chemicals from their roots which inhibit the growth of other native plants, trees, and fungi.

The previous owners planted a bunch of them on our acreage here and they're also really annoyingly brittle vs the native maples. They get damaged in storms easier. I'm constantly cleaning up from them.

I'm currently resting my legs on a coffee table made from the trunk of one that came down in a burst storm some years ago. It's a soft maple but quite nice for wood working.

Just biding my time until the natives I planted next to them grow up a bit more and then I will take them all down and get them milled up.

I lost a number of shrubs planted under one before I thought to look that up. I am plotting its demise even now.

Add Oriental Bittersweet, Black Swallow-wort, English ivy and Chinese Wisteria to this list and you've got my back yard. The winner every year is the Wisteria. It cannot be killed.

I'm waging a constant war on my property with Oriental Bittersweet. It can't be reasoned with, it can't be bargained with... it doesn't feel pity or remorse or fear... and it absolutely will not stop. Ever. Until you are dead.

My parents, on the other hand, thought it might be fun to plant a little bamboo patch about twenty years ago. They now have an entirely uncontrollable forest of the stuff.

A friend of mine lived in a house where the previous owner had struggled with bamboo. In some frantic, mad, last ditch effort they mixed some concrete and poured a half-assed slab over the bamboo stubs.

This did not at all work, as the bamboo grew back and broke through the concrete as needed, effectively becoming an armored rootball of hate.

Don't forget the gorse:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulex

This stuff is all over scotland where I am - it's like nature's barbed wire

Where I grew up too (NE Scotland). It does smell very nice every now and then then, like coconut

A favourite in the golf community (I grew up in Hopeman - east of Inverness)

Oddly, one of the most common invasive plant around Seattle is Scotch Broom. That stuff cannot be controlled.

Gorse is a man made problem. The result of wrong fire management that in fact is the result of bad farming. Needs fire to sprout.