A group of volunteers in north Shropshire have said they are determined to get rid of an invasive plant which has taken root along their river.<\/p>\n
River Perry Water Watch, based in Baschurch, is pulling up Himalayan balsam from their riverbanks, with members saying it degrades them and damages biodiversity.<\/p>\n
The group’s leader Wendy Lowdon said it was a preventative measure to stop biodiversity decay in the river, in which other species are crowded out or killed off.<\/p>\n
Volunteers have started work at Queen Elizabeth Field, in Ruyton-XI-Towns, but added there is “a lot more work to do” along the river.<\/p>\n
Himalayan balsam is one of the most widespread and common invasive plants that are not native to the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n
The flower on the plant has 3cm-long pods that are highly-pressurised. When they are ripe and touched, up to 800 seeds can be propelled up to seven metres away.<\/p>\n
Wendy Lowdon, from the River Perry group, said the plant could “kill” diversity along the riverbank.<\/p>\n
“It grows very tall fairly rapidly in the summer, up over two metres, it shades all other British plants including nettle and thistle,” she said.<\/p>\n
“It has a pretty flower, which bees and insects like, but it’s very short-lived.”<\/p>\n
Lowdon added that once the balsam is “pollinated and seeded”, it dies back and “has no root system”, meaning the bank is destabilised.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A group of volunteers in north Shropshire have said they are determined to get rid of an invasive…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":656996,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1397,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-656995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=656995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/656996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=656995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=656995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=656995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}