Bindweed? Knotweed? advice appreciated
James P
Posts: 4
We moved into a new house in January of this year and now spring has arrived the garden is throwing up some interesting plants... one of which is some worrying looking weed around our pond, which we'd appreciate some help identifying.
Some photos below, it's some sort of bindweed, we hope not Japanese Knotweed, but we really don't know. The stalks are quite bamboo like, although not hollow it seems, the leaves are arrow shaped with a point, and the stems and leaf veins are red. They are only about a foot high at most and don't seem to have spread too far. They have not flowered yet, so hard to tell what they will look like but we don;t want to leave it too long if more urgent action is needed. There is a photo we have from the estate agent advistisement that shows the weed with more growth and flowers, but not the best resolution, that's below too.
any advice gratefully recieved!
Posts
http://apps.rhs.org.uk/plantselector/plant?plantid=978
This is often planted by ponds. Might equal bindweed for invasiveness. Pretty white flowers though.
In the sticks near Peterborough
Here is a photo of a thicker stem which we cut (in was very near the pond hence the algie)
It's a thug right enough
In the sticks near Peterborough
thanks nutcutlet, how confident are you it's this?
have found more photos now, believe it's definitely Houttuynia cordata, thank you.
At least it's not japanese knotweed, we will look into how invasive etc it is, it looks like it's been there for a few years and not spread too much, plus other plants around it are doing ok, so fingers crossed.
If you want to get rid of it you have to dig down and get every tiny bit of thr root. Any which is left will start a new plant .
If it was not near your pond I would say attach some lengths of it in a poly bag , Bruise the leaves and spray lightly with Gipsophalate , close the bag up . This will get through to the roots . The bag idea stops the weedkiller getting on other plants .
BUT as it is near the fishpond Im not sure, Trouble with bindweed it smothers everything else.
But it isn't bindweed lucky3. The roots are different colour, bindweed roots are white those are black/brown.
Glyphosate is a risk near ponds because it is usually sprayed, and the overspray gets into the water, where it can be harmful to fish etc.. However, if you are careful and are willing to put a lot of effort in, you may be able to apply glyphosate directly to the leaves without any getting into the water. I use a hand spray using the gentlest of twitches on the trigger when weeding very close to desirable plants. I just get right up to the weed and give it the smallest of applications. You only need to get around 20% of the leafage for it to get right through the plant. It is absorbed within four hours and won't then run off if it rains.
Two weeks ago I applied glyphosate to long grass blades coming out of the centre of a clump of sempervivums. I wore a rubber glove on my left hand, sprayed a few drops of glyphosate onto the glove fingers, rubbed the fingers together so the fingers were wetted but no glyphosate droplets were left free to run off onto the sempervivums, and then drew the grass blades through the glove fingers. Today the grass is dead and i will pull the dead stuff up in a week.
Good tip. Gold1locks.