Bohemia Village Voice

The First Invasion

We were a safe distance from the shore, apparently. Our guide was attempting to engage the interest of the audience.
Those at least feigning concentration were visibly straining their ears against the wind and their stomachs against the swell. We, on our part, were listening attentively to the air. It carried the beaches of the mottled cliffs towards us from the end of our gaze. The shock of spray and shingle was upon us – the words of our guide swept away. To think that the wind can toy with such an oppressive body of water . . . to think that the weed shares this power . . .
Shhhooaar! Shassssss! The waves appeared to make the sounds that they should. For a while we stood still, lamenting the loss of our ancestral home, a railing leaching the heat from our hands. Our ears gradually became attuned to the impact of waves upon the beach. An oddity.
A dull slap was subtly interlaced with the roar of the breakers, a sound evocative of ripples upon the waters of a lake that feebly die as they are absorbed by the side of a boat – or vegetation.
It was my imagination, I am certain, but as we stood scanning the base of those asphyxiated cliffs the whole surge of the tide seemed reduced. All the force of the sea seemed absorbed by that bloody plant! The weed that muffled every detail of the land and reduced its meaning to the intermittent slur of the tourists behind us. A great limp plateau of sickly yellow masses . . .
The tour boat drew further into the channel as a deformed mass of this killer drew towards us.
Industrial man coaxed the weed. Although species of plant were transported across natural boundaries over thousands of years prior to this age, such ecological distortion accelerated during those years between the mid-19th and early 24th centuries CE.
Our mechanically minded ancestors naively stimulated the creation of standardised habitats; and Greater Britain was the first landmass to be invaded by a single plant species.
‘Invasion’ appears a laughable term in these days of mass monoculture. Nevertheless, early writings of industrial man distinguish between ‘native’ and ‘invasive’ plants. For instance, Polygonum cuspidatum was originally known to British speakers as Japanese Knot Weed, in reference to its Far-eastern origins.
Botanists often speculate as to why this weed increased in strength in Britain, rather than placidly hybridising with other species, as in Europe. We know that the plant was reproducing asexually in Britain, spreading from rhizome segments in disturbed ground, until the early 21st century.
Was it in contaminated soil dumps that cuspidatum started to change – knitting its fibrous roots through greater depths of spoil? Female plants arrived in the 22nd century. Unnerving reproduction. Imagine the unease of farmers – spraying herbicides – burning crops – as whole fields of clamorous ovate leaves appeared.
Britons were resigned to watch, as cuspidatum evolved, as it weaved a deathly garment, immune to chemicals. As the country lost its food, mobile creatures could but follow fragments of the freely budding beast, as they flowed placidly down rivers to colonise anew. Perhaps mutation from nuclear spillages during the next century aided its adaptation to new areas.
Towns smothered. Forests choked. Marshes clogged. Mountains beaten. The remaining Britons drew into closer tribes. They fished amongst the ruins of coastal towns, where plant life had fought the threaded concrete – un-casting it like moths. They sang of the loss of the birds and worshipped creatures long forgotten.
They were remembered to the world in their final efforts – desperately swimming from the surge of a salty weed.