July 15th – Also a pain is the himalayan balsam. This tall, beautiful plant is growing in abundance now, and flowering strongly on damp waste ground, stream banks and the hinterlands and margins. It’s beautiful pink/white, metallic-scented flowers hide the real problem: this is an invasive species introduced by the Victorians.

The plant grows so tall and thickly that it chokes all beneath it, yet once established, like japanese knotweed, it’s very hard to remove.

The A461 Pipe Hill at Lichfield, and most of the verges to the waterworks at Pipe Hill are full of the stuff, season by season edging it’s way to Muckley Corner.

A beautiful undesirable.