Himalayan balsam

[victor meldrew]

Nope, balsam is yellow/orange or yellow/olive

Must be snow on the backs of my returning foragers or they're moonlighting as graded grain sifters

John

 

[MuswellMetro]

Seems to do nowt for a couple of years then suddenly it's everywhere

When the pods are ripe ,go along with a plastic bag, put it over each pod and touch the pod with the inner surface of the bag . It will explode with a pop! if properly ripe . Do this with as many as you like and you'll soon have a bag full of seed .
No need to dry it fridge or anything else it .
Should it accidentally get scattered around it will spring into life next year !
It will spread naturally as the popping is it's strategy for maximising the distance from plant to seedling !

John

i was a very god fast bowler...if you unstand

 

[victor meldrew]

Fully

 

[Polyanwood]

Should we beekeepers be spreading himalyan balsam ???? It gives a good flow and makes nice honey and the popping seed pods are great fun, but all the little plants under it and around it seem to die and it seems to make the bank of the stream softer and erode more. I say let's resist spreading it and give our native wildlife a bit more of a chance against this invader.

 

[victor meldrew]

Said it before all life on the british isles is alien , we were under 6 kilometres of ice 10,000 years ago

John

 

[Terrysbees]

Monday we had the hill behind uscovered in flower , Tuesday NT came with over a dozen volenters and started pulling it out ,they left it in piles all over the footpaths,and still flowering bee don't seem to mind plenty left the didnt get to to steep . last time they tried spraying had no bees then

 

[Rosti]

Balsam Ident

Him Balsam Ident. The girls tend to get covered in the pollen and look like golden ghosts coming back. R

 

[MuswellMetro]

Said it before all life on the british isles is alien , we were under 6 kilometres of ice 10,000 years ago

John

yep i'm my bees are 200ft above the london basin on the terminal morraine of the last ice sheet to get as far as london...20,000year ago i think, my garden if full of granite glaciated stones...from 300 miles away "up north",,and they worry about co2 when the stable state of earth over the last million years in northern europe is under ice..6km thick

the sun has gone ito Maunder phase, expect a cold winter this year and a steady decline in average temp of 2c until 2040...i'm praying global warming will give us some remt from the cold.

 

[Midland Beek]

At least HB honey is worth getting, not like that OSR stuff.

 

[iball]

the sun has gone ito Maunder phase, expect a cold winter this year and a steady decline in average temp of 2c until 2040...i'm praying global warming will give us some remt from the cold.

When I was a kid I remember being told that we were heading for another ice age.

Ian

 

[gavin]

Most likely find out it was introduced/spread by bayer/monsanto....and they are the only one's with the antidote,spray to kill it,and they are just waiting until it has complete control then they can make a fortune when people are begging to see the back of it.

In fact the rumour is that Monsanto are releasing a GM version that is resistant to the Bayer herbicides, and Bayer of course are releasing one resistant to glyphosate .....

To those climate change deniers contributing to this thread, do you *really* think that this is so unimportant that it can be brushed aside with some glib fluff about the sun being in a Maunder phase?

Try:

June Shatters Average Global Temperature (Again)

G.

PS The data came from the NOAA State of the Climate Report

 

[Queens59]

Odd! In 'A Colour guide to pollen loads of the HB' by Kirk it says that Balsam pollen is yellow...hence my comment. Serves me right for trusting a book I guess...

 

[Blue Spinnaker]

Odd! In 'A Colour guide to pollen loads of the HB' by Kirk it says that Balsam pollen is yellow...hence my comment. Serves me right for trusting a book I guess...

Stephen Hardy's Pollen Colour Guide says it's a creamy colour.

Difficult to trust colour guides - suppose it depends on printer ink?!

 

[MuswellMetro]

To those climate change deniers contributing to this thread, do you *really* think that this is so unimportant that it can be brushed aside with some glib fluff about the sun being in a Maunder phase?

]

Short answer is "yes", but then the long answer is that i having an Msc in solar physics and worked at rothamsted on C02 gas uptake in the 1970s and contirbuted to many scientific papers on Co2, that my view is based on my working knowledge and not the " i beleive" in Anthropological global Warmimg" creed pumped out by the media...does my post say i dont beleive, in AGW...no it says we may need it

as AGW is on many other sites, lets discuss beekeeping not AGW on this site

 

[freckledbeck]

the sun has gone ito Maunder phase, expect a cold winter this year and a steady decline in average temp of 2c until 2040...i'm praying global warming will give us some remt from the cold.

Eh? Sorry, never heard of this before? Thought the average temps were rising dramatically?

 

[Brosville]

They are.......... 97% or more of the scientists who work on it agree, but there is a vociferous minority of thickerati (funded by Exxon and others) doing their best to decry it's veracity - leading lights amongst the flat-earthers are Delingpole of the Torygraph, Melanie "wouldn't know the truth if it bit her in the bum" Philips of the Mail, Lawson, (worst chancellor we've ever had, writer of dreadful diet books and father of the simpering cook).........

 

[victor meldrew]

They are.......... 97% or more of the scientists who work on it agree, but there is a vociferous minority of thickerati (funded by Exxon and others) doing their best to decry it's veracity - leading lights amongst the flat-earthers are Delingpole of the Torygraph, Melanie "wouldn't know the truth if it bit her in the bum" Philips of the Mail, Lawson, (worst chancellor we've ever had, writer of dreadful diet books and father of the simpering cook).........

Have you anything good to say about anybody ?
We could all launch into tirades of bile driven invective and innuendo for goodness sake .

We could but don't !! Why? because we've heard it all before and are bored rigid by it .
Go and find an appreciative audience I'm sure I'm not the only one to feel like this .
No use saying "no need to read it , it pops up all over the damned forum

John

 

[kazmcc]

We have a stream running through the allotments that our project is on, and there is TONS of this plant. I saw the bees bringing back a off white, creamy pollen. Where could this be from?

 

[Polyanwood]

I heard that the bank erosion caused by HB is problematic for water voles, which already are very low in numbers.

 

[Queens59]

We have a stream running through the allotments that our project is on, and there is TONS of this plant. I saw the bees bringing back a off white, creamy pollen. Where could this be from?


Sounds like it has been agreed that Himalayan Balsam is creamy white/yellow, and if it is there the girls will take it...same as kids can't walk past McDs!!!!