Snow covers Japanese knotweed
21-01-2010
Japanese knotweed hidden by snow
It’s actually often easier to survey sites for Japanese knotweed plants in the winter. This often surprises our clients who want it identified and eradicated.
In the summer you have thickets of brambles and other vegetation that can hide smaller Japanese knotweed stems. In the winter, when the shoots or leaves of most other plants in the field layer have died down, Japanese knotweed crowns can be identified by the dead, bamboo-like knotweed canes that persist – even if the old knotweed shoots are only 10-50cm tall. However, with the recent snow covering much of the UK, finding Japanese knotweed on sites where it would otherwise be relatively easy, has become very difficult… Hurry up spring!
