On the trail of one of the most despised and criminalized plants: Japanese knotweed for The Baffler

For The Baffler’s issue “Bloom and Gloom,” I push through stands Japanese knotweed, one of the world’s most reviled plants. (Clonal, it is also quite possibly the world’s largest single plant and largest female being, hence I wonder what is so scary. Or, maybe it tracks to our geopolitics). Read more here or below:

I crossed a mountain pass as the fog burned off. One knotweed glistened in the light, and I nearly had to pull over because of the flowers’ sheer splendor. I wondered about the limits of human perception, and my own perception. What are the ideas of value or beauty held in certain plants? A grass lawn is unnatural and deadly to many other creatures. As I drove, the maple leaves burned red, and the sky was so clear it felt like you could see to the outer atmosphere. It was a big migration day for birds. The route I took tracked to where Earth’s first forests emerged 380 million years ago, before the trees were even trees (they were essentially giant ferns). Those plants depleted oxygen in the ocean, which is said to have led to a mass extinction.