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I'm worried ...............
I've been boring everyone who will listen to me with this very subject for hears.
Plants which were brought back by early collectors were put on ships which took months to arrive here. Now any idiot with a plastic bag can bring a little souvenir back from their holidays.
And don't get me started on the so-called official importers of plants. Thanks, whoever you were, who imported diseased ash saplings to this country. 90% of my local trees will shortly be infected and dying.
Australia has the right approach. Finally.
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Does anyone else suspect that Harlequin ladybirds may well have arrived in the UK as 'ecologically sound aphid predators' purchsed for commercial greenhouses
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
There is the other side of the coin though, the native European species wreaking havoc on other continents. If you google purple loosestrife you will get US environmental sites cursing it for clogging their waterways.
Nature is such a delicate balance isn't it, thousands of years of evolution changed by human activity in a few decades.
Dove - I suspect you are right.
I remember reading , a couple of years back , about a tiny parasitic wasp which only fed on Jap Knotweed and in studies has been found to starve rather than eat anything else.
There was talk of studies to see if it might be used in UK
I wonder if the research has finished / reached conlusions?
Anyone know?
Many of the plants we grow and believe to be native have their origins in far off fields and mountains, and what is being said about pests and diseases is the same coming in on the demand for plants and cut flowers, that our growers seem unable to satisfy, I suffered with white rust on chrysanth,s a few years back had to burn about 500 plants, apparently this fungus came in on imported cut flowers.
Oh - but that would be too simple Hosta wouldn't it? Someone will be given mega bucks in a grant to do that study and then nothing will come of it - as per usual.
or am I just an old cynic?
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
I've got Paulownia seeds. I thought, given their rapid growth , they might make a good fuel crop
Just to play Devil's Advocate for a moment, do we want to get rid of all foreign imports or just the ones we don't like?
On the one hand we have Himalyan balsam, Japanese knotweed, Rhododendron ponticum, bloody sycamore, rabbits, north American tree rats (aka grey squirrels), rabbits, ash die-back, Dutch elm disease, harlequin ladybirds, New Zealand flatworms.....
And on the other: tomatoes, potatoes, aubergines, chillies, French beans, pak choi, horses, Limousin and Charolais cattle (and Friesian - let's not go into those atm), cedar of Lebanon etc. etc.
Are we going to be consistent in our rejection of foreign migrants?
(ducks for cover)
said all what before Steve?
I decided to delete that post but it wouldnt let me so I came up with the foregoing diatribe. Ignore me.
I'm with you on Devil's Advocate.
The only thing to stop anything else is to ban all imported plants, fruit and vegetables and seeds . and basically anything made from any natural material: leather , cotton , wood etc etc.
Will it happen, and would we want it to?