A-Z Weeds Glossary
Check out our comprehensive glossary of the most common weeds on your property.
Have you come across a term or phrase that you did not understand?
Welcome to our Weeds Glossary – designed to help explain the long list of jargon associated with Japanese knotweed and a host of other weeds within your garden.
Please contact us if we have missed anything – we are constantly updating our Weeds Glossary to keep up with changes within our industry.
Also known as Ground elder and commonly mistaken for Japanese knotweed.
Japanese knotweed is similar to bamboo in only that it is just as invasive with rapid growth during spring and summer. Likewise, controlling Japanese knotweed does not differ from bamboo, but it’s here that the similarities end in appearance.
Another name for Japanese knotweed.
See Convulculus arvensis.
See Rumex obstusifolius L.
Also known as Hedge Bindweed and commonly mistaken for Japanese knotweed.
See Cornus sanguinea.
See Sambucus nigra.
Also known as Bindweed and commonly mistaken for Japanese knotweed.
Also known as Common Dogwood and commonly mistaken as Japanese knotweed.
See Lilac Syringa macrophylla.
Another name for Japanese knotweed.
Another name for Japanese knotweed.
Fallopia baldschuanica is grown as an ornamental plant for its flower-laced vines, and it is a fast-growing plant that is grown widely as cover for unsightly fences and other garden structures. However, it has the capacity to become an invasive species by spreading beyond its intended limits.
Fallopia baldschuanica (is an Asian species of flowering plant in the knotweed family known by several common names, including Russian-vine, Bukhara fleeceflower, Chinese fleecevine, mile-a-minute and silver lace vine. Commonly mistaken as Japanese knotweed.
It is native to Asia (China, Russia, Kazakhstan, etc.), and it can be found growing wild in parts of Europe and North and Central America as an introduced species.
Fallopia japonica is native to Japan, Taiwan and Korea. It is now widely naturalized in Europe and North America and is regarded as one of the worst invasive alien species. For Japanese people, F. japonica has been one of the most familiar and useful wild plants for centuries. It is rare to regard the plant as a harmful weed in Japan. Fallopia japonica has many ethnobotanical uses as an edible and medicinal plant.
Fleeceflower is a common name for genera and species in the subfamily Polygonoideae.
Another name for Japanese knotweed.
Another name for Japanese knotweed.
Glyphosate is a broad-spectrum systemic herbicide and crop desiccant. It is an organophosphorus compound, specifically a phosphonate, which acts by inhibiting the plant enzyme 5-enolpyruvylshikimate-3-phosphate synthase. It is used to kill weeds, especially annual broadleaf weeds and grasses that compete with crops.
See Aegopodium podagraria.
Another name for Japanese knotweed.
Another name for Japanese knotweed.
See Calystegia sepium.
Herbaceous plants in botany, frequently shortened to herbs, are vascular plants that have no persistent woody stems above ground.
See Impatiens glandulifera.
Another name for Japanese knotweed.
Himalaya fleece flower is a tufted ground cover plant with dark green, tapered leaves on creeping stems. Tiny, bright rose flowers bloom in dense spikes about 8 inches high from late summer into autumn.
See Leycesteria Formosa.
Often mistaken for Japanese knotweed.
Also known as Himalayan Balsam and commonly mistaken for Japanese knotweed.
An inflorescence is a group or cluster of flowers arranged on a stem that is composed of the main branch or a complicated arrangement of branches.
An interval between two successive nodes. It possesses the ability to elongate, either from its base or from its extremity depending on the species.
A literal translation of itadori is pain puller or removes pain. People of Japan, Korea and China have traditionally used the plant roots of itadori as an anti-inflammatory, a laxative, for oral hygiene and cardiovascular health, treatment of acute hepatitis, kidney stones, high cholesterol, and skin rashes amongst a host of other uses. It is also believed to extend life spans presumably reflecting its medicinal properties.
Japanese knotweed is similar to bamboo in only that it is just as invasive with rapid growth during spring and summer. Likewise, controlling Japanese knotweed does not differ from bamboo, but it’s here that the similarities end in appearance.
Fleeceflower root is the root tuber of Polygonum multiforum Thunb., a perennial herbal plant of the Polygonaceae family. The root is used either in dried form or processed by steaming with black soybean juice. Its vine stem and leaf have medicinal actions too.
Japanese knotweed belongs to the plant family Polygonaceae: ‘Poly’ means many, and ‘gony’ is from the Greek for ‘knee’, giving ‘many jointed’.
The scientific name of Japanese knotweed in current use is Fallopia japonica, although some scientists still use Polygonum cuspidatum (USA) and Reynoutria japonica.
In Japan, the plant is commonly known as ‘itadori’ which translates as ‘take away pain’ as it’s used in traditional medicine. In its introduced range, other common names include Sally rhubarb, donkey rhubarb, gypsy rhubarb, Hancock’s curse, pysen saethwr, ladir tir, glúineach bhiorach, Mexican bamboo, German sausage plant, Japanese bamboo, Japanese fleece-flower and wild rhubarb.
It is commonly known as Asian knotweed or Japanese knotweed. It is native to East Asia in Japan, China and Korea.
In America the common names have also varied and have included ‘elephant-ear bamboo’, ‘fleece flower’, ‘Japanese bamboo’, ‘Japanese fleece flower’, ‘Mexican bamboo’ and ‘wild rhubarb’. Around the world Japanese knotweed has had local names such as: ‘Parkside’ in Sweden; ‘Asiatic knotweed’ in New Zealand; ‘Huzhang’ in China; and, of course, ‘Itadori’ in Japan.
The Cornish name, ‘Ladir Tir’, is a rare example of the democratic addition to the lexicon since the Cornwall Knotweed Forum, voted for this translation of their preferred English descriptor, ‘land thief’.
Also known as Pheasant Berry or Himalayan honeysuckle and commonly mistaken for Japanese knotweed.
Also known as Daphne Lilac and commonly mistaken for Japanese knotweed.
Japanese knotweed is similar to bamboo in only that it is just as invasive with rapid growth during spring and summer. Likewise, controlling Japanese knotweed does not differ from bamboo, but it’s here that the similarities end in appearance.
Another name for Japanese knotweed.
Another name for Japanese knotweed.
A point of attachment of a leaf or a twig on the stem in seed plants. A node is a very small growth zone.
A P35 Expert Report is a legal document that is produced in court. It includes all of the information about your particular case of Japanese Knotweed. You would normally need a P35 Expert Report when Japanese Knotweed has crossed a boundary or has caused some liability for one of the parties. This would include a neighbouring property being devalued due to the Japanese knotweed being present on a neighbouring property. This, therefore, might mean that to take your case to court, you need expert documents to prove liability.
A panicle is a much-branched inflorescence. Some authors distinguish it from a compound spike inflorescence, by requiring that the flowers be pedicellate. The branches of a panicle are often racemes. A panicle may have determinate or indeterminate growth.
Another name for Japanese knotweed was coined by children who used the hollow, cut stems as pea-shooters.
See Leycesteria Formosa.
Phloem is the living tissue in vascular plants that transports the soluble organic compounds made during photosynthesis.
Photosynthesis is a process used by plants and other organisms to convert light energy into chemical energy that can later be released to fuel the organisms’ activities. This chemical energy is stored in carbohydrate molecules, such as sugars, which are synthesized from carbon dioxide and water – hence the name photosynthesis.
The Polygonaceae are a family of flowering plants known informally as the knotweed family or smartweed—buckwheat family in the United States. The name is based on the genus Polygonum. The name may refer to the many swollen nodes the stems of some species have, being derived from Greek, poly meaning ‘many’ and gony meaning ‘knee’ or ‘joint’. Alternatively, it may have a different derivation, meaning ‘many seeds’.
The Polygonaceae comprise about 1200 species distributed into about 48 genera. Polygonaceae contain some of the most prolific weeds, including species of Persicaria, Rumex and Polygonum, such as Japanese knotweed.
Synonym of Japanese knotweed.
Polygonum is a genus of about 130 species of flowering plants in the buckwheat and knotweed family Polygonaceae. Common names include knotweed and knotgrass.
Another name for Japanese knotweed.
A raceme or racemoid is an unbranched, indeterminate type of inflorescence bearing pedicellate flowers (flowers having short floral stalks called pedicels) along its axis. In botany, an axis means a shoot, in this case, one bearing the flowers.
Reynoutria japonica, synonyms Fallopia japonica and Polygonum cuspidatum, is a large species of herbaceous perennial plant of the knotweed and buckwheat family Polygonaceae. It is commonly known as Asian knotweed or Japanese knotweed.
Reynoutria sachalinensis is a herbaceous perennial plant growing to 2–4 m (79–157 in) tall, with strong, extensively spreading rhizomes forming large clonal colonies. Also known as giant knotweed or Sakhalin knotweed due to its leaves being some of the largest in the Fallopia family.
The species is closely related to the Japanese knotweed, Reynoutria japonica, and can be distinguished from it by its larger size, and in its leaves having a heart-shaped (not straight) base and a crenate margin.
Native to northeastern Asia in northern Japan and the far east of Russia.
In botany and dendrology, a rhizome is a modified subterranean plant stem that sends out roots and shoots from its nodes. Rhizomes are also called creeping root stalks or just root stalks. Rhizomes develop from axillary buds and grow horizontally. The rhizome also retains the ability to allow new shoots to grow upwards.
Broadleaf dock is of the same family as Japanese Knotweed, but is commonly mistaken for Japanese knotweed. It is able to grow in a range of different soil types except for the most acidic soil. It spreads very easily, which is why it is classed as an invasive weed. Just like Himalayan Balsam, it spreads easily threw seed dispersion. This happens through a variety of ways such as wind, animals and water. It is commonly found on wastelands, roadside verges, woodlands and gardens. It can quickly spread creating dense stands which overpower other species. This takes away valuable space, water, nutrients and sunlight from other plants in your garden.
See Fallopia baldschuanica.
Also known as Common elder and commonly mistaken for Japanese knotweed.
A stem is one of two main structural axes of a vascular plant, the other being the root. It supports leaves, flowers and fruits, transports fluids between the roots and the shoots in the xylem and phloem, stores nutrients, and produces new living tissue. The stem is normally divided into nodes and internodes.
Xylem is one of the two types of transport tissue in vascular plants, phloem being the other. The basic function of xylem is to transport water from roots to stems and leaves, but it also transports nutrients. The word “xylem” is a Greek word, meaning ‘wood’; the best-known xylem tissue is wood, though it is found throughout a plant.
