Japanese Knotweed at Garelochhead and a one man clean-up

A few weekends ago there was an impressive beach clean at the head of Gare Loch. People lifted immense quantities of litter off the beaches on the eastern side and along the head up to the outlet of the McAuley Burn. I noticed that at about the same time brambles and other shrubs were cleared from the area between the footpath and the beach. I presumed that was the council's doing. Then pyramidal stacks began to appear along the salt marsh part west of McAuley Burn. I presumed that was council work too until just the other day when I saw one man, whom I stopped to chat to, systematically clearing wood, litter, and last year's dried knotweed stalks and piling them up into, so far, seven bonfire heaps. You might be able to make them out in the photo below.

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Here is one of the heaps and the sadness of litter around it. As the man said, the swathes of knotweed act as litter traps. To clear it one would need some kind of heavy duty scraper or digger, but then what would you do with it all? I guess it would have to be burned or the knot weed would be spread wherever it was dumped.

I suppose one advantage of the litter trapping by the knotweed is that it doesn't float out to sea again. And talking of 'advantages' of Japanese Knotweed, I've noticed that further up the burn, at the edge of its flood plain, there are parts of the bank where the lumpish knotweed root 'stacks' seem to have made what look like 'natural' levees. It occured to me that these monster plants are holding the bank fast. Perhaps.

Where the new shoots are growing many are already thicker than my forefinger. You can see in the photo below how thick they get when fully grown by the broken off last year stems. If you can enlarge the photo you'll see that the nascent leaf on the largest of the shoots looks like a red arrow.

All is not gloom on the Garelochhead littoral though. I spotted this driftwood piece of tree root art recently. I've increased the colour saturation to make the details clearer.

I'm thinking well done that one guy putting in all that effort. I hope he gets to burn his bonfires. The area he has cleared certainly looks a great deal better than it usually does at this time of year.