The dual nature of Japanese Knotweed

On that note, the dried knotweed stalks are fun to burn because their bamboo-like segments are divided by a membrane that seals them shut, so they pop quite satisfyingly. Our kids were sad that they ran out of it at some point after a while harvesting the stalks behind our yard.

If I understand it correctly, the reasoning is that until the late summer, the underground root system is putting its energy towards growing the stalks and leaves, so you _want_ it to grow as much as possible. If you trim daily, you'll never let it get into the rapid growth stage where it's really depleting its energy reserves. In other words if you trimmed daily or monthly til the end of time, eventually you'd kill the plant, but it might ironically die more quickly if you trimmed monthly.

It's a bummer knowing that it'll be hard to fully eradicate it given how widespread it is in the area (I'm also in Massachusetts), but I guess there aren't really any permanent victories in life when you think about it.

For the other patch, I did just what you say, cut, herbicide and then covered it.

> [Feral pigs] are invasive and cause millions of dollars in agricultural damage each year, rooting and trampling through a wide variety of crops. They prey on everything from rodents, to deer, to endangered loggerhead sea turtles, threatening to reduce the diversity of native species. They disrupt habitats. They damage archaeological sites. They are capable of transmitting diseases to domestic animals and humans.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/feral-pigs-are-inv...

> Interestingly, in their native range in Europe and Asia, pigs do not cause as much ecological damage. In fact, some studies indicate that they may modify habitat in important ways for species that have evolved with them, such as frogs and salamanders.

https://theconversation.com/feral-pigs-harm-wildlife-and-bio...

That's the magic about ecosystems. They develop over aeons, and have intricate interdependencies. Many species are extremely picky about how they mate, where they lay their eggs, what they eat when they're larva, what they eat as adults etc. If you wipe out a single plant, you could wipe out an insect that exclusively feeds on it, which could wipe out some other thing that feeds exclusively on that insect. If an invasive species that threatens a single native species, this isn't just "something we don't like", it can cause a chain reaction of extinctions.

They aren't called invasive species when they have arrived on their own without human intervention and then outcompete.

Japanese Knotweed did not come to Europe and US by its own accord, it was intentionally planted in gardens from where it escaped and is now causing ecological and economical damage at a massive scale.

Calling it an invasive species is basically admitting that it was a mistake in introducing it to another environment, and also (sometimes legally) forbidding of adding any more and/or mandating destroying existing ones.