Comment by cvoss
10 hours ago
The article abridged the history too much. It was first imported as an exhibition of plants from Japan in 1876. It's usefulness as a ground cover in the US was understood later, and in the 1930s (Dust Bowl times) the USDA advocated farmers intentionally plant it as a way to hold down the soil. After that, you might say, it far exceeded its usefulness as a ground cover.
This can be very interesting- take https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heracleum_mantegazzianum for example. A nice tall beautifuly flowering plant suitable for the hard environment of the Caucasus, for hundreds of years a rarity grown in a few aristocratic gardens in Europe.
Then times changed, many of those gardens were no longer maintained, regular people found those nice plans & started passing seeds and planting them to their own gardens.
Turns out the nice plan comes right out of hell, prospers in European climate, if you cut it the sap is extremely caustic & will give you painful blisters from a single drop. If you survive cutting it down (in some places it creates impenetrable grooves) it just regrow ls from the root, multiple times.
So yeah, nice new plans showing up can cause a lot of fun. Well, at least as long as they don't walk its fine...