In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln appointed Thomas Hogg U.S. marshal to Japan, and over the following years, Hogg sent plants home to his brother James, who ran a nursery in the Yorkville section of Manhattan . A 2017 paper in the Journal of the Torrey Botanical Society by Peter Del Tredici of Harvard University’s Arnold Arboretum pieced together how the plant reached North America. One of them was Japanese knotweed.
Two came from Europe, and one arrived directly from Japan through the Hoggs. He also noted that shoots had recently served as an asparagus substitute in France. Del Tredici suggested the two descriptions most likely referred to different clones.
Del Tredici found articles from 1868, 1872, and 1875 that point to three separate introductions during the 1860s. In his 1875 article, James Hogg said the plant had reached him seven or eight years earlier, placing its arrival around 1867 or 1868. He described a striking perennial that grew 5 to 7 feet tall and set rose-colored fruits in September. An 1868 piece by botanist George Thurber praised another plant’s graceful appearance but called its rapid spread its greatest fault. In Britain, the sap-feeding psyllid Aphalara itadori was released in 2010 to help control Japanese knotweed. The plant’s rapid growth, once noted as a horticultural feature, has made it difficult to manage more than 150 years after its introduction.
Researchers have also assessed its suitability as a biological control agent in North America, according to the USGS and CABI.
