Friend of Bees -The Japanese Knotweed

This isn't a seed related post, instead,  just something else I like.  As a new beekeeper, my interest in poking around in old journals and books has led me to Polygonum cuspidatum. (Say it aloud with a good bounce - its fun)  

Japanese Knotweed was introduced in the United States as an an ornamental in the mid 1800s and grew to be one of the hardest plants to keep from taking over the countryside. 


Gardners of larger estates (and people with small lawns,  but with attitude) appreciated Castor Bean and Cannas for their large lush exotic aesthetic.
Japanese Knotweed fit right in. 

Back before the internet I had to look it up in Bailey when a narrow, shady ally behind my house sprouted a bee full forest of the stuff. 

What I haven't known until recently is that it makes a nice dark honey!!

 Japanese Knotweed honey has many people who appreciate it. I've never tasted it, but I love buckwheat honey which is as dark as molasses, so I am planning to find Polygonum cuspidatum honey to buy this fall.  

The other feature that beekeepers appreciate is the flowering time of knotweed in New England falls when most other flowers are taking a break before starting up again in early fall.  Called "the dearth", during this time when most plants are not flowering beekeepers need to feed their bees to keep their numbers up so they are ready for the important work of gathering the fall flower honey.   Bees who are not fed during a dearth wisely decrease the their numbers so there are fewer mouths to feed.  However, if the hives have a big tract of knotweed to forage on there is no dearth for those bees. 

This article promoting it as a garden plant for the larger garden is from 1868.  The same magazine, The American Agriculturist, was still promoting it as an ornamental in 1887, although they place more emphasis on how it gets out of control, with suggestions of planting it in a tub, or someplace where it can spread.  

The Japanese Knotweed.  (Polygonum cuspidatum.)

The genus Polygonum, although a large one, cannot boast of many species sufficiently elegant to be cultivated for ornament. We are familiar with them as plants to be ejected from the grounds rather than to be introduced, for here belong the False, or Climbing Buckwheat, the Black Bind-weed, Smart-weed, Knotgrass, Goose-grass, and others whose common names indicate their weedy character. The Polygonum Orientale, the Prince's Feather, or Ragged-Sailor, a tall Species with rather coarse foliage and drooping spikes of rose colored flowers, is often been in the humbler attempts at gardening, in company with Sunflowers, Love-lies-bleeding, and other similarity coarse and weedy plants. 

"We have for some years known a species which is really worth cultivating, but which does not seem to be much disseminated—the Polygonum  cuspidatum, a native of Japan. It is a perfectly hardy perennial, which throws up branching stems three or four feet high, bearing large oval leaves, which are long-pointed at the apex,—hence the name;  cuspidatum. 

The small white flowers are in Utile clusters in the axils of the leaves, and are succeeded by the fruit, or seeds, which being of a pale rose color are more showy than the flowers themselves. Though the flowers individually are small, they are produced in such abundance and have such a graceful droop that the plant is quite showy in flower and fruit, and its effect is heightened by the reddish color of the stems.

The plant increases very rapidly, and soon forms a large clump; indeed this is its greatest fault, and one which unfits it for use in smallholders. 

It is very effective for planting where there is plenty of room, and it will grow in any soil and situation, even under the shade of trees. It blooms in July and August, and continues for a long time. There is a variegated leaved. form which is rather curious, but the variegation is not constant. 

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I had to include this video!!

And I also have to include this one.  This is why it is a hated plant.

The presenter in this news clip is Christine Walkden, one of my favorite Gardners Question Time panel members. Gardners Question Time makes a great podcast for commuting BTW.