Unknown Plant

[PMM123]

Hi,

Can anyone identify this plant for me please?



Thanks

[treecreeper]

Possibly....maybe....young Himalayan Balsam

[aeshna5]

Originally Posted by treecreeper

Possibly....maybe....young Himalayan Balsam

Agree!

[Adam Cheeseman]

No maybe about it! It is!

Cheers,

Adam

[PMM123]

ive heard bad things about this plant, what are the reasons for its bad reputation?

[metalfish]

It's a plant that myself & other volunteers up in Nottinghamshire'v spent ages trying to get rid of.
It's a plant that's good at it's job! It spreads horrendously/ very succesfully along rivers & ditches & wetland sites by scattergunning it's seeds everywhere . A mass of balsam plants then grow very fast and densly packed, outcompeting other native wildflowers & grasses so creating long swathes of just h. balsam.
This severly depletes plant diversity in an area and then on up the food chain.

The good thing is it's dead easy to pull up, you just have to do it before the flowers turn to seed, and remove the pulled up plants from the site. This is because plants are tenateous things, they may re-root or have enough stored energy to finish making viable seed if the plant is pulled up late in the season.

Another problem is it's pretty & people like it so it gets sown in gardens and spreads to the wild

[KeenTeen17]

Originally Posted by PMM123

ive heard bad things about this plant, what are the reasons for its bad reputation?

All it takes is one plant and it takes over like wild fire! All the other plants are choked out by it and some have to grow really tall in order to get some light. Although its a menace its very good for bees and wasps.

The same bank of the river has been invaded by the dreaded Himalayan (Indian) Balsam (Impatiens glandulifera), but where that species has been cut down, it has left evidence that under the right conditions, Common Figwort (Scrophularia nodosa) will grow to 6 feet in height, as the photo below shows.