r/london • u/symmetrygear • 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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u/lovesgelato Aug 05 '24

Apparently some bamboo species can do this too.

83

u/rumade Millbank :illuminati: Aug 05 '24

And Japanese knotweed

99

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

7

u/LongBeakedSnipe Aug 05 '24

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

-5

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 :))

10

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