Having been for a walk at the weekend, which took me into Duthie Park and the Winter Gardens, got me thinking about the history of parks and gardens. Historically the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the Gardens at Versailles were the first to spring to mind, however these would be private, royal areas. The same applies to parkland, being the private preserve of royalty and the aristocracy for hunting. The modern concept of the public park begins with the Victorians, urban areas set aside and designed by landscape architects such as John Loudon and Joseph Paxton. Claiming to be the first public park is the Derby Arboretum designed by Loudon and opened in 1840 [ though it should be noted that the Earl of Chesterfield opened Phoenix Park to the residents of Dublin in 1745]. Paxton followed two years later with Princes Park in Liverpool.

http://www.derbyarboretum.co.uk

Off hand I cannot think of any city in the British Isles which does not have public parks and gardens. Please post your own favourites or ones you would like to visit, regardless of where they are, and anything you would like to add re the history of parks and gardens. I know we have a few gardeners amongst our members.

The Winter Gardens at Duthie Park, Aberdeen. Duthie Park opened in the 1880s and the Winter Gardens were added in 1899.

The Dinosaur area at Crystal Palace;



Sculptures by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins

It has been suggested that the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were in fact built by Sennacherib at Nineveh 300 miles to the north;

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/may/05/babylon-hanging-garden-wonder-nineveh

We have visited a few gardens in Britain, notably the Eden Project and Heligan (I loved the little history of Heligan but no doubt you all know it). And your mention of Winter Gardens reminds me of the Sheffield Winter Gardens, not old but the largest glasshouse garden in Britain. We loved it in 2004 and still loved it later, but were saddened that such a lovely building was now shadowed by a damned silly hotel complex right next to it, meaning it can't be seen so easily.

When we travel later this year we would quite like to see the Sackville gardens of Sissinghurst and Knole, since they are what people here seem to consider "the" gardens. Apart from the design and creation of the gardens, these date back to Tudor times (relevant here always!) and the stories of the Sackville-Wests would keep you going a while.

On our way over we are stopping at Hong Kong and their Nan Lian gardens look well worth a visit, with their intricate planning taking into account so many different meanings, each feature being placed according to the rules that fit.

I'd also like to visit the entirely edible garden that my son enjoyed down in southern England - Tapeley Forest Garden.

Forgot to say the Nan Lian ones will also be a comparison with the Chinese Gardens in Dunedin, which are quite new and are supposed to be one of few authentic Chinese gardens outside China. We have been to them a couple of times but I suppose we enjoy more plants and less rocks and similar features in gardens really. But they were quite new last time we went and perhaps the plants will be more obvious now.

A sneak preview of Sissinghurst for you, Caro;



I suppose the best known Tudor gardens would be those at Hampton Court.

http://www.hamptoncourt.org.uk/

Palm trees are not something normally associated with Scotland, but thanks to the Gulf Stream, they can be successfully cultivated, such as these examples at Culzean Castle;

The seventeenth century gardens at Versailles, now a World Heritage Site;



http://en.chateauversailles.fr/gardens-and-park-of-the-chateau-

Not just at Culzean Trike, here's Inverewe on the same latitude as Hudson's Bay.

Glasgow Green is often touted as the oldest public park in Britain/Europe/the known universe; I don't know about that but it can at least be dated back to the charter of 1450 granting the land to the bishop and people of Glasgow. Initially it was more like common land and used for grazing, bleaching and so forth but now it contains the Peoples' Palace with a fine winter garden

and the Doulton Fountain (Yes, it is ceramic) and beside it is the Templeton's carpet factory, with shades of the Doge's Palace.


In the Botanic Gardens is the Kibble Palace, first built in Kibble's own garden on Loch Long in the 1860 s and then dismantled 10 years later and transported to Glasgow.

Inverewe !!! of course. I couldn't remember it's name.

Great pics, Ferval



One for Nielsen, the Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen at night;

National parks are an American concept, given the size of the United States it's perhaps not a surprise. The very first one was established on 1 March 1872 to preserve the spectacular area of Yellowstone;



http://www.nps.gov/yell/index.htm

Tongariro in the North Island of NZ was the first national park to be established in New Zealand, and the fourth in the world. It is unique in that it was the first national park in the world to be gifted by a country's indigenous people. The chief of the area gifted it to the nation, then the Crown bought more of it over the years. One of the great walks of the country.

We went to Inverewe (did I see a nikau palm in that photo, ferval?)and I wrote the following in part for a newspaper article about Scotland:

Scotland is close to the Arctic but because of the Gulf Stream it is considerably warmer than it might be. Beaches as beautiful as any in New Zealand or Australia abound on the northern west coast and had the weather been anything other than tempestuous we might have been tempted into the water. Even in the rain temperatures hung round the 18º mark. And at a latitude north of Moscow’s we spent hours in two of the most impressive gardens we have ever been to. Inverewe Gardens were designed by Oswood Mckenzie in the latter half of the 19th century and have transformed a rocky wilderness into many acres of temperate and tropical growth. As well as the walled garden, herbaceous borders, pool garden and wetlands, there were plantings from all over the world, including a plot of New Zealand natives.

Further north we visited Achiltibuie hydroponicum and garden and tourist centre near Ullapool where we were given a guided tour of the premises which had herbs, flowers, vegetables and fruit, all growing happily without soil. We were interested to see tamarillos growing and even more interested that the other visitors had never heard of them.

Just had to look up a video of Tongariro. I see from wiki, it was used for some of the location shoots for the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

One for Paul, the Forest de Soignes in the south -eastern side of Brussels. The forest [ it was much larger in 1815] was in the rear of Wellington's army on Mont St Jean and this deployment was criticised by Napoleon in his memoirs.



The forest provides the citizens of Brussels with a countryside escape on their doorstep.

A garden with a difference and in a small, remote corner of the world are the Japanese Gardens in the small town of Cowra, Australia. Cowra was host to a POW camp during WWII, mainly housing Japanese and Italian prisoners. In 1944 some 200 Japanese were killed during an attempted mass breakout, and the dead where buried in a special cemetary there. After the war the residents of the town continued to care for the cemetary, and over time the site developed into a spectacular garden designed by Ken Nakajima and in memorial to those Japanese prisoners.

That is quite lovely, ID, and at odds with how the Japanese in wartime are generally remembered. There was a similar event in NZ, where Japanese prisoners were held at Featherston. There was a strike by the Japanese, a warning shot was fired which wounded a Japanese lieutenant and led to rioting, which then meant 49 Japanese were killed and one NZer. An enquiry exonerated the NZ guards and talked of cultural misunderstanding. There was a reconciliation visit and plaque put up decades later with the originally wounded lieutenant in attendance. No beautiful gardens though. The NZhistory site says: Decades after the war, several Japanese survivors of the incident, including Adachi, visited the site of the camp in a gesture of reconciliation that some New Zealanders with bitter memories of the Pacific War were still reluctant to accept.

The breakout was quite horrific, over 500 Japanese prisoners attempted escape by storming machine gun posts only with improvised weapons whilst simultaneously, the Japanese still inside the camp commited suicide. 4 Australian guards were killed, 231 Japanese dead and 108 prisoners wounded. It obviously left a large impact on the Cowra community, and after the gardens were developed the Japanese government removed all their soldiers buried in Australia to the Cowra gardens as well.

It really is a beautiful and tranquil site, and over 5 acres to wander through.

Two smaller and possibly less well known gardens in England are Leonardslee in West Sussex and Tresco Abbey Gardens in the Isles of Scilly - for me both with many pleasant memories from childhood. Leonardslee was a regular local outing and we visited Tresco every time we were holidaying in Cornwall.

Leonardslee was constructed in a sandstone valley that had originally been dammed to create a series of ponds to provide waterpower for the Wealden iron industry. So what is now a tranquil wooded valley was in the 16th and 17th centuries a noisy, smokey, polluted industrial landscape whose trees had long since been turned into charcoal. When iron smelting moved away to be closer to the coalfields the valley was abandoned as too acid for agricultural use. It was bought in the late 19th century by Edmund Loder and developed into a garden specializing in azaleas, rhododendrons and camellias … he also introduced gazelle, wallabies and beavers. The best time to visit is early May when the rhododendrons are in bloom. The wallabies are still there but probably remain as elusive as I remember they always were.



Tresco Abbey is another garden created out of a barren unpromising site: the ruins of a mediaeval Benedictine Abbey on a small, rocky windswept island, off the tip of Cornwall. It is exposed to the full blast of Atlantic gales but by using the old abbey walls and planting hardy windbreak species the 19th century landowner, Augustus Smith, managed to create a flourishing sub-tropical garden.

ID and Meles, those are excellent choices.

The Cowra garden got me thinking of this one, the Hiroshima Peace Park [ it's the best one for showing the park in relation to the modern day city, note the burned out dome is still there]

All these lovely - and unattainable - landscape gardens makes one wonder why anyone bothers with flower shows. Much as I would like the vista type, my own is stuffed with flowers of gor blimy in-yer-eye colours and shapes for a wonderful naff display should summer ever arrive. Please someone show some pics with flowers too.

Hope you like this one, Priscilla. No idea where it is though;



It is taken from this website, which contains more pictures;

http://www.flowergardenpictures.com/

Oh dear, not quite Gertrude Jekyll, is it? Whoever planted *that* obviously hadn't read "Yew and Non-Yew".

But God Almighty first planted a garden (Francis Bacon, not me ). Here's one of His really good ones (better than Eden): it's Snowdrop Valley on Exmoor and I go every year:

This is Gertrude Jekyll style - very English country house garden - lots of colour, yes, but subtle and restrained! It's beautiful, but actually very, very hard to get right. I try and fail every year; I usually end up with a jungly mess by the end of July. Whenever I see this sort of garden done properly I am filled with divine discontent.



Jekyll worked a good deal with the architect, Sir Edward Lutyens.

http://www.hestercombe.com/history/history-jekyll.html

Priscilla wrote:

Much as I would like the vista type, my own is stuffed with flowers of gor blimy in-yer-eye colours and shapes for a wonderful naff display

I'm with you there P, and have the same. Tons of vibrant blooms, the only greenery I have are the planted herbs that I use in the kitchen. All in all, probably not in the best taste, but who cares? It is for my enjoyment and I love the colour.

Ah, Temps, the Jeckyll effect - I must offer guests muted glasses and then mine will pass muster too. Its a bit Hyde too, of course. But martial hollyhocks along the back and somehow it works. I hated the block colour stuff though; garden muddle is also expressive of the mind I guess.

http://www.independent.co.uk/property/gardening/gardening-yew-versus-nonyew-1351434.html



Not being quite so attached to nostalgia, Non-Yew gardeners use the latest, best, most colourful hybrids devised. What is more, they mix the colours together. Upper-class gardeners adored powerful colour in Victorian times, but have now lost the stomach for it. Non-Yew gardeners have picked up where the upper classes left off. Wholly immune to colour nausea, they feel that colour is good, therefore the more of it the better. Look through any edition of the weekly Gardening News for a positive colour-drenching...These plants will attest that they reside in suburbs, towns and villages (fashionable and unfashionable) tended by gardeners who are usually far more knowledgeable than their upper-class equivalents. The plants will say they are well looked after, colourful and bold. They have no pretensions, except to looking absolutely fantastic.

When Rosemary Verey grows them I will eat my gumboots*.

* What posh people call their wellies.

PS Please note, ID, that all this is very much tongue-in-cheek. The only real sin in an English garden is having those dreadful *Spanish* bluebells, instead of proper English ones. People do notice. As if we all haven't got enough to worry about without having bluebell stress as well.

Crossed posts.

Please do not mention hollyhocks to me, Priscilla. Besides the inevitable rust, something had a good munch at mine last year: they ended up looking like strange, leggy cheese plants, more holes than leaf.

It implies that there is a certain snobbery about gardens though, and what plants are 'in' or 'out'?

Don't get me wrong Temp, we don't have that nonsense here so I'm well away from it all and couldn't care less what others think anyway. Or if there is, there is always a possibility that I'm oblivious to it too .

I'm just continually amazed at the lengths some people will go in order to make others feel small, or themselves superior. And all over something as trivial as a garden? Utter madness.

I do understand what you mean ID, but a garden should never be seen as 'trivial', however big or small.

Today I planted an american red oak which will probably still be there long, long after I've departed this life. Last weekend I planted three Californian redwoods, each perfectly capable of living for well over 1000 years, that is if I've put them in favourable places ... not easy when one has to consider what might be required and demanded of the poor little 40cm tall saplings over the forthcoming millenium. While on a smaller scale, the hellebores that I planted three years ago, seem so happy here that they've already started to self-sow down the adjacent rocky bank. And the lovely grape hyacinth that now flower everywhere in the spring I suspect were probably introduced by a previous owner, much, much earlier in the first half of the 20th century.

But "my" garden is just that - a reflection of my tastes... and the tastes of others. In reality "my" garden is a palimpsest of all the previous owners ... most obviously the Flemish lady, the previous owner, who planted many of the now mature trees ... but also all the previous owners, farmers, charcoal burners, quarrymen etc who have sculpted the land.

EDIT : By the way P this is all I've got flowerwise at the moment: the climbing rose around the front, and that's suffering from blackspot - not very impressive is it? But I have planted some marigolds and petunias in the bed below it, just for a bit of colour since all the usual perennials are so late this year ... although all these little plants were severely squished by a thunderstorm. I'm just 50 mins from the Mediterranean coast, further south than Venice, Nice, Rome, the Côte d'Azure ... yet I'm not exaggerating when I say we have had rain nearly every day since April. What a year - and it's still miserably cold as well! But looking on the bright side I haven't had to water my newly-planted trees and we've had absolutely no greenfly this year ... at least not so far.

Quote :

I will eat my gumboots*.

* What posh people call their wellies.

The only thing NZers call their wellies. "Wellies' comes very reluctantly from my pen. (ok, computer keyboard) Sounds very pretentious to NZ ears.

The 'fashion' in NZ of recent years in garden shows has been for flaxes and grasses and NZ natives and bugger-all colour, but swings and roundabouts come there too, and I think colour is returning. I love grasses and natives in a garden, but I also want to see roses (which someone offensively said aren't 'cool' at the moment - huh!), dahlias, poppies, daffodils, ceanothus, bluebells, etc. Not marigolds much though.

Caro wrote:

Quote :

I will eat my gumboots*.

* What posh people call their wellies.

The only thing NZers call their wellies. "Wellies' comes very reluctantly from my pen. (ok, computer keyboard) Sounds very pretentious to NZ ears.

Isn't that odd? No one I know says "gumboots". And Lord knows what they'd say in Upperthong if you tried to make them have Gumboot Wanging instead of Wellie Wanging.
We do like our alliteration here in England.

http://www.upperthong.org.uk/?page_id=404

I very much approve of Rule 4:
Distances shall be measured in yards, feet and inches. None of this European nonsense.

PS Marks and Spencer sell wellies and welly socks; no mention of gumboots on their website.

Have I been pronouncing New Zealand's capital city wrong all these years? Gumbooton actually sounds quite appealing - I can picture it populated by jerky little characters with names like Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble, and Grub.

Might not be any worse than the names we have - or at least the people they are named after. Auckland is after George Eden the first (and I think last) Earl of Auckland, but he seems to have made something of a mess of a situation in Afghanistan. Though I am not sure that William's Dalrymple's analysis - heard at the Auckland Readers and Writers Festival -is a completely full account of his career.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10883931

The -Zen?- raked sand gardens of Kyoto have always appealed. The deep philosphy and associated rumble that goes with them is a tad too self conscious for my liking but the simplicity has restful beauty. Thinking of making one once I soon came to earth when I realised that local cats would find it an added bliss to their furtive lives and habits; well anyway there would be much more in it than I had bargained for. Are there no cats in Kyoto? Or was that how the idea began; a dusty courtyard and many temple cats and a novice with a rake?

I think we need a thread on possible and more prosaic origins of famed things and places. Who knows? Did Hadrian's wall begin as a rock garden started by by bored Roman squadies? Were motte and bailey castles really a boastful Norman attempt at proving that ' I made a bigger pile out of conquesting than you did.'

May be I just need time in our padded cell - the real orgin of which I can ponder there.

Regards, P...... I am in regarding mode today.

I have been to Kew Gardens this week. I hate to say it, but I was rather disappointed. It was like a huge municipal park. Royal Horticultural Society's Rosemoor here in Devon is much better. That said, Kew Palace and the Royal Kitchens were great.

PS There was a house for sale in the road leading up to the Victoria Gate. I checked it out in the estate agents - £6.5 million. Planes flying overhead every two minutes en route for Heathrow and Gatwick, and no view of the river. People are mad.

PPS When I was standing on the platform at North Sheen station I noticed the allotments opposite - a mini-orchard (three apple trees) in one. A little oasis for someone obviously. Allotments are very big again in London. Also, on the South Bank some wonderful little "gardens" have been set up growing herbs, flowers and vegetables - Queen's Walk Gardening Project. Absolutely brilliant. I really liked the rhubarb plants hanging upside down like lamps! Will try to make a picture work.


http://www.timeout.com/london/things-to-do/festival-of-neighbourhood-queens-walk-window-gardens


EDIT: apologies -  £4.5 million, not £6.5 million. I inadvertently added a couple of million to the price. Since the property is so much cheaper than originally stated, I expect several posters have now rushed in to make an offer.

Agree about Kew Gardens being disappointing. The one and only time I went was in about 1989 and even then it felt old fashioned - but in a bad way. Too regimented and lacking in soul. 

The word 'gardens' is probably the problem and might lead people to imagine some kind of 'exotic' English garden. It's nothing of the sort. As a scientific project seeking to exhibit plants from all over the world but in a limited space then a somewhat dull result is only to be expected.

I think this is a valid observation that I had not considered before. The space is underused although a delight to find named expctic and rare plants, I have seen similar in many countries with more vaariety and eye catching design. How splendi it would be to have a rival Flower show to Chelses and those arty crafty gardens - all designed for a lot of meditation and naff symbolism - could be left for a year t see how the garden works through the  seasons. A good garden according to my mum, anyway, should offer lively interest throughout the year,

The Kew special areas again are somewhat tired. When last I saw the tropical Psalm house I was bored because i had most of that in my own garden abroad - and as for cactus and succulents my own back garden had more - and my garden was nowhere near the same league as competing gardens in our annual city show. In UK many places have splendid displays, so   yes Kew could be better. I know it is the home of stored seeds ans specimens but what's the point if there is not enough showcasing. Good point, Viz.

I have never seen Kew Gardens but David Attenborough made them look most interesting in his TV programme recently.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofxCVJvHqj0

On the other hand, David At. could make a stale loaf look interesting.

It was really nice of Julius Caesar to leave his private gardens and orchards to the citizens of Rome, but did he actually do this? Shakespeare said he did, but I've checked in Plutarch (Shakespeare's main source for his "Julius Caesar") and P. only mentions the bequest of "a considerable gift" to the Romans. I believe this was a cash sum (75 drachmas for each citizen?) Were the gardens included too, or did Shakespeare just make it up?

 
Moreover, he hath left you all his walks,
His private arbours and new-planted orchards,
On this side Tiber; he hath left them you,
And to your heirs for ever, common pleasures, 
To walk abroad, and recreate yourselves.
Here was a Caesar! when comes such another?


This got me thinking about the various royal parks in and around London - when were they first opened to the general public?

I've had time to try to answer my own question about Caesar's gardens. Seems he did leave them to the citizens:

http://www.ancient.eu.com/article/112/


Caesar’s impact on the city of Rome continued even after his death when, in his will, he stipulated that his villa, the gardens surrounding it, and his art gallery all be made public.


Sort of Roman version of the National Trust.

I panicked a bit when I read this in the Daily Mail, and immediately did a tour of my garden to check that there was no sign of this pernicious plant anywhere:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2358599/Alien-eating-garden-home--And-dont-dare-try-kill-dreaded-Japanese-knotweed.html

But I had no idea that the VIctorians were to blame for introducing Japanese Knotweed - and why on earth did they think it was a herb?


Like so many invasive species (rhododendrons, for example) the knotweed was introduced by Victorians to spice up their gardens. Classed as a herb, it was brought to Europe by a Dutchman named Philippe von Siebold.

By the 1850s, it was being sold by nurseries around the UK to gardeners, and quickly spread from discarded cuttings and garden waste into the countryside.

Today it can be found everywhere. Its green stems appear in spring, growing to 7ft tall with green shovel-shaped leaves.

Phillip Franz von Siebold was German, I thought. He's more famous for his magnolia - and there aren't too many Germans one can say that about!

You are quite right, nordmann. Here is the Knotweed man on a German stamp (not with knotweed):



To be honest I had no idea about von Siebold; but the Daily Mail may be relied on for getting things wrong - unless it's an article about how some Z-list celebrity has grown enormously fat (i.e. put on 5lbs) since last week.

I'm still confused about Japanese Knotweed being classified as a herb. Perhaps MM will know.

The magnolia is lovely.

This from Wilkes University, Pennsylvania:

Japanese knotweed contains compounds that are part of a group of organic chemicals called stilbenes, which are polyphenolic compounds attached by an ethylene (Vastano et al., 2000). The specific composition is dependent on the side chains. One common stilbene found in Japanese knotweed is resveratrol, which is 3,5,4'-Trihydroxystilbene. Resveratrol has two isomers: cis and trans, with the latter being the most abundant. Piceid, also known polydatin, is a glucoside form of resveratrol found in Japanese knotweed. Emodin is an anthraquinone derivative that occurs in extracts of knotweed (Vastano et al., 2000) and other plant species.

Resveratrol has been shown to have numerous effects, as assessed both in vitro and in vivo. It decreases the viscosity of the blood and act as anticoagulant to thin blood. Human blood was used for in vitro analysis, while rabbits were used for in vivo analysis. This study showed that this property of resveratrol allows it to be effective in treating cardiovascular disease by reducing thrombosis and embolisms that can block arteries and lead to myocardial and cerebral infarctions (Wang et. al, 2002). Resveratrol was successfully able to decrease platelet aggregation in patients that were resistant to aspirin. This in vitro study showed that resveratrol could be used to help treat these high risk vascular patients (Gyorgyi, 2006).

Resveratrol can also provide inflammation relief when used in therapeutically effective amounts and combined with Devil's claw, grapeskin, and syzygium (Charters et al, 2003). Research shows that extracts from P. cuspidatum inhibits inflammation in mouse ears in response to a topical application of 12-O- tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate (TPA) by inhibiting the development of edema and neutrophil infiltration, which is an essential part of the immune response. The extract at the doses of 2.5, 1.25, and 0.3 milligrams was found to be as effective as indomethacin, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug, at reducing edema (Bralley et. al, 2008). Edema can lead to more serious complications such as congestive heart failure, so any alleviation is beneficial.

Resveratrol has been found to reduce the tumor volume, tumor weight, and lung metastasis at doses of 2.5 and 10 mg/kg in mice with highly metastatic lung carcinoma (LLC) tumors (Kimura, 2001). The inhibitory effects could not be explained by a natural killer or cytotoxic T-lymphocyte activation. Research suggests that the anti-tumor activities of resveratrol could be caused by the inhibition of DNA synthesis in LLC cells (Kimura, 2001). High doses of resveratrol have also been shown to inhibit cyclooxygenase expression in human uterine cancer cells in vitro. Cyclooxygenase is over expressed in endometrial cancer cells and makes these cells resistance to apoptosis (Sexton, 2006). Resveratrol caused apoptosis in five out of the six cell lines used by inhibiting the cyclooxygenase protein. Breast cancer metastasis was slowed down using human cell cultures with high doses of resveratrol by inhibiting lamellipodia extension (Azios, 2009). This property of resveratrol makes it a potential preventative agent of breast cancer. Low doses, however, have shown to increase metastasis and migration (Azios, 2009).

Resveratrol is a phytoestrogen and acts as an agonist to estrogen receptors in the body. Resveratrol has been shown to inhibit estradiol by binding to the estrogen receptors in vitro and activate the transcription reporter cells that are characteristic of the estrogen response (Gehm, 1997). An in vivo study conducted on rats show that there is no agonism to estrogen receptors on various target tissues, and has been shown to be an estrogen antagonist by not allowing estrogen to lower cholesterol (Turner 1999).

I just took "herb" to mean herbaceous perennial, Temp, but I see from wiki that the young shoots are edible tasting something like very sour rhubarb - and like rhubarb they contain oxalic acid so need to be cooked before eating.

How very interesting; this plant clearly is not - whatever the Daily Mail tells us - just a malevolent weed; and if I ever have a mouse with inflamed ears, I'll know what to apply!

The plant is, according to this Georgetown University Medical Centre site,  an "urban herb" and apparently it is used in Chinese traditional medicine.

http://pharmacology.georgetown.edu/urbanherbs/japanese_knotweed.htm

Current Medicinal Uses
The dried root and stem of Polygonum cuspidatum, also called Hu chang, are used in traditional Chinese medicine to treat high cholesterol and other conditions (Huang 1999). It is also used as a laxative (Lewis 1977).

Polygonum root contains resveratrol (Kimura 2001), the same beneficial phytochemical found in red wine. An aqueous extract of  Polygonum cuspidatum showed anti-angiogenesis activity in vitro (Wang 2004).

You can eat it too, in salads, or use the older stems like rhubarb, although Japanese Knotweed crumble doesn't sound very appealing.

Crossed posts, MM!

nordmann wrote:

Phillip Franz von Siebold was German, I thought. He's more famous for his magnolia - and there aren't too many Germans one can say that about!

Well then there are at least two Germans famous for their magnolias .... Sprenger's magnolia, Magnolia sprengeri,  is named after the German botanist Carl Ludwig Sprenger.