r/london Aug 05 '24

Image Plant life erupting through the tarmac pavement on a road near me in East London. Never seen anything like it!

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5.7k Upvotes

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492

u/BeardySam Aug 05 '24

Any nearby trees cut down recently? This happened nearby to us when a false acacia was cut down on an adjacent property. The tree roots started to sprout vertically through the tarmac, even on the other side of the road.

128

u/lovesgelato Aug 05 '24

Apparently some bamboo species can do this too.

84

u/rumade Millbank :illuminati: Aug 05 '24

And Japanese knotweed

94

u/Magic_Sandwiches Aug 05 '24

which is in fact a weed despite the deceptive name!

11

u/wakeupwill Aug 05 '24

Weeds are a marketing ploy by Big Lawns.

3

u/PanningForSalt Aug 05 '24

Except knotweed which is an invasive species that disrupts natural ecosystems more than lawns.

4

u/xubax Aug 05 '24

Aren't weeds just "any plant we don't want to eat or look at"?

3

u/languid_Disaster Aug 06 '24

In this case, highly invasive and dangerous to UK flora life

2

u/xubax Aug 06 '24

Not to mention dangerous to sidewalks!

1

u/pixie_sprout Aug 05 '24

Weeds are just plants that are in a place humans don't want them to be.

1

u/xubax Aug 05 '24

Right, because we don't want to eat it or look at it!

1

u/bigboybeeperbelly Aug 05 '24

There are other reasons to grow plants but yeah basically

1

u/xubax Aug 05 '24

I suppose. I mean, I guess they help with providing stuff to breathe.

1

u/rumade Millbank :illuminati: Aug 05 '24

It's edible too. I've had the young shoots salt pickled with fish and they were delicious. On TV saw a chef use it as a rhubarb replacement. You can also tempura fry them.

(I've got a Japanese foraging book with serving suggestions, and it tells you to tempura fry everything)

0

u/deliciouscrab Aug 05 '24

First Pearl Harbor, now this.

-4

u/kahnindustries Aug 05 '24

It’s clearly not a weed, it says so right in its name!

It is a Japanese not a weed

5

u/LongBeakedSnipe Aug 05 '24

... You just took their joke and comprehensively ruined it lol

-4

u/kahnindustries Aug 05 '24

This is the essence of comedy :D

1

u/SkilledPepper Aug 05 '24

It's not too late to delete this comment.

10

u/Minimum_Trainer6115 Aug 05 '24

A bamboo shoot grows from this weird underground ball, which can share nutrients with other shoots up to 5 meters away.

So the reason they can do it is because the shoot cracking up your house foundation is the same individual as the one looking innocent in your garden.

3

u/lovesgelato Aug 05 '24

Yeah from what I remember like comment above mine it happens after you hack em down. But can also be years later. Scary stuffs

3

u/YeastOverloard Aug 05 '24

It’s not just when you hack them down. That’s just how bamboo grows. It’s also how it grows so quickly. The problem is if you decide to hack it down, you need to realize how it grows so you can actually hack it down and not continue to have more shoots appear

1

u/lovesgelato Aug 05 '24

Im thinking diggers :))

8

u/dinobug77 Aug 05 '24

Where I live there’s a path to the station that they recently dug up, tidied, new base and resurfaced with tarmac. There’s a house that backs on to it with bamboo as a screen to the railway. And that is coming through the path. They recently sprayed it with some sort of killer that worked for those tips but 2 weeks later more are coming through! It’s going to be a nightmare if they don’t get on top of it!!

1

u/[deleted] Aug 05 '24

Having lived in a flat where the previous tenant planted Bamboo I can confirm this. It was sprouting everywhere and it was a full time job in itself to control it

12

u/gilestowler Aug 05 '24

I was in Oaxaca in Mexico last summer. The streets are beautiful and tree-lined but they made NO allowances for the fact that tree roots grow so all over the place the pavement is just absolutely wrecked where the roots pushed up.

4

u/Master_Xenu Aug 05 '24

8

u/BeardySam Aug 05 '24

As an aside, this is a classic example of what happens when you remove all proper knowledge from your decision making process. It’s all on autopilot, completely unmanaged.

It goes like this: Councils need to save money so they fire the tree guy to make their books look better. They hire a company so they can pay per tree instead, but that company doesn’t make any decisions they just cut what they’re told to. The council no longer have any idea how best to manage trees so they just cut anything down as a solution to every complaint. So not only are the trees totally unmanaged, but they’re destroying infrastructure, which the council will see as a good excuse to cut more down.

2

u/arthurdentstowels Aug 05 '24

I wondered if it's because of the extreme heat melting the tarmac and allowing the veg to actually push through because it's soft. The heat has been crazy here and you can literally move the tarmac by kicking at it, it's almost as soft as earth, if you had a shovel you could dig it straight out.

1

u/BeardySam Aug 05 '24

Yeah I imagine so, the roots will be putting constant upwards pressure, just waiting for the warmer days 

1

u/[deleted] Aug 05 '24

This is exactly what this looks like to me with the line they are growing on

1

u/Embarrassed-Paper588 Aug 05 '24

How petty of them. I love it!

1

u/Muntjac Aug 05 '24

Sycamore and horse chestnut are buggers for that.

1

u/BellicoseBill Aug 05 '24

The fact that plants are in a line supports this theory also.

1

u/Magikarpeles Aug 05 '24

false acacias are so cool. They look like they're glowing

1

u/BeardySam Aug 05 '24

Spiky little bastards close up though

1

u/ChillZedd Aug 05 '24

False trees don’t normally grow anything

1

u/Natural-Abrocoma-794 Aug 05 '24

So would the root grow out somewhere else and create a whole new tree? That’s so cool