Cardiff friday Morning Environmental Project: Friday 27th May Himalayan Balsam Pulling in Bute Park

Seven volunteers visited Bute Park today to help remove patches of the invasive plant himalayan balsam. Himalayan balsam plagues so much of our river banks and due to such a massive invasion and spread, it now threatens our woodlands and meadows.

Luckily, these invasive plants have such shallow roots we can pull them up very easily. This is handy as we need as many volunteers as possible to eradicate the plant completely. Each polinated flower has up to 100 viable seeds and each plant may have up to 70 flowers. This means for each plant we miss there are potentially thousands of new plants next year. The longer we fail to tackle this issue the worse the situation will get. There are plenty of opportunities to help pull some up, so give us a call if you fancy helping out.

The following photo was taken before and after a volunteer spent about 15 minutes pulling balsam and this section is now balsam free (for now):

Slideshow from today:



Map of area:


View 27.05.11 Blackweir Cardiff Friday Morning Project in a larger map

Here is a Himalayan balsam montage, which I made a couple of years ago where it domanates the banks of the River Wye, has invaded ancient semi-natural woodland and pond margins: