imported plants threaten trees

m.guardian.co.uk

Not good. Let's just ban all imported plants

 

Britain has an open door, in more ways than one.

 

oh that's very nicely worded, it just happened to appear at kew? so it's not their fault that it's here then?

 

Thinking about the bigger picture, 10,000 years ago anything North of London was buried under a 2 mile thick ice sheet & the whole of southern Britain was permafrost so if we had any native trees they wouldn't have been much more than the Reticulated Willow if that.

All our trees are imports really, just some have been more sucessful than others.

I personally still miss the mature Elm trees, there is a whole generation that only know it as a hedge now & I wont live to see the D.E.D. resistant ones mature.

Its impossible to check every import for bugs & eggs, and fungus spores are omnipresent in the atmosphere so will grow on any suitable host.

We will continue to get problems from further afield, its one of the problems with global trade, but in the end, its just accelerated evolution, some species will adapt and survive, others will fail.

 

No It's bad. We should ban imported plants just like drugs. More invasive plants would carry a more severe penalty for growing. "just evolution accelerated" before we no it everywhere will just look the same covered in invasive plants that should not be there. You all just say this cause you don't want to admit it :D
I trust what the forestry commission say. :D

 

Like I said, unless its a Reticulated Willow & a bit of Reindeer Moss then its all imported anyway.

There are laws about importing fro outside the EU

Bringing food and plants into the UK : Directgov - Travel and transport

But I think you can move what you want within the EU.

Where do you draw the line though, no fresh food imported during the winter months? Tesco's shelves would only have Leeks & pickles on them, like the supermarkets in the old Eastern Block countries during the cold war.

 

Err do the forestry commission grow any native trees?
Scots pine perhaps.

Arn't they the people responsible for covering large areas of the country with single species forests of alien origin.

 

you must not understand the problem.

 

And they don't understand the weather

past 2 winters have been so cold the sea ice has started to freeze.

 

According to the managing director of Westonbirt Arboretum, out of something like 2000 trees only about 30% are British native trees.

 

Westonbirt is 30% Reticulated Willow? Bet the Elk love that.

 

It`s not just Willow. We have native Oak, Ash, Sycamore, Beech, Birch, Cratageus and Malus.

 

I think Ziggy is trying to make the point that they were all aliens at some time or another

 

Lime, elm, hornbeam, yew, juniper. It's not natural things being mixed up so much it has a butterfly effect on the ecology faster than is natural. It's not how our woodland evolved over of thoussnds of years It's happening over years now who knows what effect it is having. It mite be unstoppable, but It's still a serious issue. :D