A knotty problem

JAPANESE knotweed plants, be afraid. Be very afraid. After years of damaging our buildings, clogging up our drains and despoiling our beautiful river banks, your end is nigh.

Your nemesis is about to come amongst you, knotweeds. For we are about to unleash into your unsuspectingly midst a psyllid, or larvae, of the Aphalara itadori bug.

These tiny sap-sucking inspects from your home country are dying to meet you. And you will be dying as they eat you. You are doomed, doomed!

After a five-year research project, the UK government is about to introduce these bugs in an effort to kill off said knotweeds, which cost us 150 million a year to control.

But while the march of the killer Aphalara itadori might sound like a combination of A Bug's Life and The Fly, we wonder if the government has thought this through.

Once the sap-eating bugs have destroyed the last knotweed plant, will they curl up and die or might they find a way to survive, by quickly evolving?

What if we are faced with a plague of sap-eating bugs? Might we have to import a new killer to kill the killers? And what if they do their job and multiply?

The danger in all this is what might be called "old woman syndrome". Remember, she started by swallowing the spider to catch the fly. The rest is history.