A GROUP of volunteers spent a humid morning by the River Tees ridding a section of the bank side of Himalayan balsam, an invasive weed, which has become more widespread.
Geoff King, of Trees for Teesdale, and nine volunteers spent the morning uprooting the troublesome plant from the bank side between the weir and the Silver Bridge.
Himalayan Balsam is an invasive non-native plant, which was introduced to the United Kingdom by Victorian collectors at the same time as Japanese hogweed.
The balsam plant, which has delicate pink flowers, can grow up to two metres in height, but it smothers everything around it and when it dies in the autumn, it leaves nothing but mud.
Mr King said: “Each seed head can contain up to 200 seeds and it has an aggressive seed dispersal reach of up to four metres, so it’s important to try and get rid of them before they mature.
“Until there is a biological way of dealing with the plant we have to continue pulling them.”
He added: “It’s relatively simple to uproot them, but you need to break the stalk from the rootball otherwise they can re-root. We’re probably a little late this year as some of the seed pods are mature, but we do what we can.”
The volunteers also cleared the area of Ragwort, another invasive weed, though this was bagged and taken away.
![A COUNTY councillor is backing a campaign to get a pedestrian crossing in Staindrop. Frustrated parish councillors in the village summoned their county council representative Cllr George Richardson to their latest meeting to discuss several issues, including the call for a safe way to cross the A688. Earlier this year their request for a crossing was turned down by the county council’s highways officers. Parish council chairman Jonothan Raper described the reasons for the refusal as “spurious” and called on Cllr Richardson to support their campaign. He added: “One of the arguments they made was there is no clear line of desire when they studied the village – well this isn’t a clear line of desire because there isn’t a crossing, people cross whenever they can. “When the lollipop person was there, one of the things I noticed was people would walk all the way down to the lollipop person to cross the road to go to the shop or to go to the school.” He added a problem of parking at the primary school is exacerbated because people are too afraid to walk their children across the road. Cllr Richardson said he had supported previous attempts for a crossing point with the first being made about 15 years ago. He added: “We went fairly well down the road with that and they looked into it. The only recommended place was where the bus stop is and to get the visibility splays, people on the other side of the road would lose their parking. “That didn’t go down well so it just died a death.” Cllr Raper said he suspected the real reason for the officers’ refusal was the cost of installing a crossing. He added that much of the cost could be recovered from savings made on not having to employ a lollipop patrol. Cllr Raper said: “A lollipop person only provides a benefit of crossing for three hours of the day. You are getting 21 extra hours of crossing time [with a pedestrian crossing].” Cllr Richardson said he would raise the issue with the county council’s cabinet member for highways, Cllr John Shuttleworth.](https://teesdalemercury.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/georgeR-120x86.jpg)
