I have a bone to pick with the New York Times.

In a recent Times Style magazine article, they lavished praise on a subject many, including me, hate with a passion: Japanese Knotweed.

We all know it. Tall bamboo-like stalks, some eight feet high gathered together in clumps and colonies. It can be found sprouting alongside the road, in low spots and sometimes in your lawn. You can call it fake bamboo, Mexican bamboo, the Godzilla weed, fallopia japonica. It is like Superman without a cape. You can’t kill it.

The Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association says it “is a nightmare” to get rid of.

That, my dear friends, is an understatement. I first did battle with this plant in my mother’s garden where it was planted as a decorative item by the previous owner. Mom loved the long bamboo-like stalks, the bright green leaves, and fluffy blooms.

One summer, after she died, it was time to do battle. Carefully following the roots with shovel and spade, the digging began. I watered the dickens out of the patch and pulled it, and pulled it, and pulled it some more.

Surely it was gone, so the second half of the chore was cleanup and time to chop the plants up into little twigs and dump them in the compost pile in the back corner of the yard.  After a week or so, some pink shoots were starting to peek their noses up out of the garden soil. Stabbing a garden fork into the earth, once again it was time for more digging and pulling and digging and pulling. The remains were chopped up into short pieces and flung back into the compost pile.

All seemed to be OK, until the following spring when the dreaded bamboo was back in the garden. After burning it with a propane torch failed, someone suggested the gardener’s version of a chemical attack. “Round-Up” is a herbicide that someone suggested is a close cousin to Agent Orange. While that chemical style weapon of mass destruction did not work on the Godzilla plant, the garden was probably poisoned for eternity.

Not only did the bamboo live, but the compost, where generations of careful gardeners had deposited autumn’s falling leaves to produce lush, ultra-rich soil for the gardens, was now filled with dozens of eight-foot high stalks of the devil plant.

The attempted murder of a plant failed, and the effort managed to ruin the compost pile.

Do you think the experts should have been consulted before beginning my murderous assault?

Here is what the experts at Maine Organic Farmers say: “It will sprout from even tiny root fragments, so attempts to dig it or pull it out are not recommended.” Maine’s State Agriculture Department web page agrees.

They suggest cutting it once a week during the growing season and covering it with a tarp. This will work if, and, it is a big if, you have a reliable labor source to keep it in check. You should repeat the process every two weeks, for the next 10 years, said the state website.

Even the NY Times admits it is a major league pest. “It can colonize all that it touches and, if left unchecked, could disembowel the neighborhood,” they said. Then they offered a suggestion.

Rather than dig, pull and poison it, the Times suggests you can eat it. Like rhubarb, the hollow, crunchy stems are juicy and tart. Rather than simply (trying to) kill it, The Times quoted a Danish chef named Holmboe Bang who said: "It's delicious, so it’s better to eat it, no?”

Bon Appetit magazine agrees, suggesting it is an excellent springtime delight. “The stalks are tart, crunchy, and juicy; they can be eaten raw or cooked; and can lean (towards) sweet or savory, depending on how they’re prepared.”

So, they explained, knotweed is in many ways the perfect thing to forage: It tastes good, it’s easy to find, and, unlike many wild edibles, it’s at zero risk of being overharvested.

Count the folks at Red Brook Honey in Scarborough as big fans of Japanese Knotweed. They say the plant’s tiny blossoms attract thousands of honey bees to the dreaded invader. “I know it is invasive, but it is a rock star,” said Geoff MacLean, Red Brook’s beekeeper. He explains that honeybees visiting the Japanese Knotweed blossoms turn the plant’s nectar into the best crimson red honey in the great state of Maine.

“Every year, the state beekeepers association holds a blind taste-testing session, and my dark red honey is always at or near the top,” he said, adding this year's Godzilla weed honey should be ready in a couple of weeks. 

It looks like Mother Nature may have done the impossible by magically transforming the Godzilla plant into a sweet natural taste treat.