An esteemed Ayrshire bowling club fear killer Japanese Knotweed could wipe out their precious £60,000 green.
Tarbolton Bowling Club hope to toast their 150th anniversary as a club in three years.
But members are running scared from the highly-destructive plant which is putting them on the edge of disaster.
Now they worry that without urgent action there will be no club – described as the heart of the community – left to celebrate.
Bowlers have been digging trenches and hacking at shoots in a desperate bid to save their precious green with frightened members describing the overgrowth as a “jungle”.
Japanese Knotweed can grow up to 20 centimetres a day towards its towering full height of 12ft.
Club Secretary Anne Reid told Ayrshire Live: “It is like a jungle here, it’s all fully overgrown.
“It worms its way through everything, it can go through brick and it grows at a rapid pace.
“It’s edging closer and closer to the green. If it goes onto the green then that is it, gone. It would need to be ripped up and relaid again.
“It would cost £60,000 to redo it. The community can’t afford for that to happen so it would be a disaster. The bowling club is at the heart of the village."
The killer weed is spreading from vacant land which has been earmarked for new homes by Allanvale Land Developments.
Ayrshire Live told in 2015 how bowlers were already fighting against the killer plant.
Ms Reid has told how, seven years on, they are still pleading with developers to help them tackle the green beast before it is too late.
She claims that Allanvale Land Developments boss Jim Kirkwood – manager of West of Scotland League Premier Division side Troon – has ignored SOS calls.
However, Mr Kirkwood denied receiving any contact and has laid out plans to eradicate the weed.
He said: “I’ve not received any correspondence from Tarbolton Bowling Club but we’d be very open to a meeting with them and the community.
“I’ll happily sit down with them and discuss our plans. We had the area before the knotweed was there.
“We don’t know if someone has tipped that on to our site, someone might have had it on their own site and they have ditched it onto ours.
“Previously, there was no knotweed there and no evidence of it.”
Mr Kirkwood, who has had previous dealings with Japanese Knotweed through years in the building trade, is hoping to draft in a specialist to carry out the huge task of stopping the rampaging.
The process could take up to a year with timing essential.
“We are going to get a specialist contractor to go out to the site in the next six to eight weeks," he continued.
“They have to wait until the growing season is over before they go and do the first spray. In the spring, they’ll go in and cut it. Then they’ll spray it again at the end of the summer.
“It’s a big job as it has to be removed safely and it could take up to a year. It’s not impossible; we’ve got rid of it before on other sites."
Japanese Knotweed was first brought to the UK in 1850 and is said to have become naturalised in 1866.
But the plant quickly became a major problem after leaving its natural environment in Asia where 30 species of insect and six species of fungus feed on it.
The problem is, however, those species do not exist in the UK which subsequently allows the plant to thrive.
Don't miss the latest Ayrshire headlines – sign up to our free daily newsletter here
