Doing some research, I started finding out about different types of invasive non-native species that were around in the UK. These plants were usually brought over as ornamental species in the victorian times, but a lot of them became a massive problem as they started overtaking existing species and generally becoming a bit of a pain.
I originally wanted to tackle ten of them, including some lesser known invasive species - but I didn't want to bite off more than I could chew given that this was a later arrival, so I chose to cover 3 of the more iconic species - Himalayan Balsam, Japanese Knotweed, and The giant hogweed. They all look a bit like this:
This is what Japanese Knotweed looks like. It has really pretty dark stems and ornamental flowers - but it grows at really fast rate, and is ridiculously difficult to destroy. The stems have to be snapped and filled with herbicide to properly kill it off - so it completely ravages gardens and plant life really quickly.
Himalayan (or Indian) Balsam is a lot similar to Japanese Knotweed - in that it's a really pretty and delicate looking plant that is an absolute monster. It takes over vegetation that it's planted near, so even though it looks really pretty and has beautiful flowers, its actually really damaging to have around in your garden.
Giant Hogweed is another dangerous and invasive plant in the UK. Most people know of Hogweed because of the massive uproar it caused in the press last year, when the sap from it's stem caused a girl's skin to essentially burn off her hand. This is what a Hogweed burn looks like:
Nice.
Even though these plants have grisly undersides to them, I do think there is beauty in the plants themselves - and I really liked the idea of turning something horrifying like these into beautiful prints. I went back to the drawing board to make more studies to work from.
No comments:
Post a Comment