The Mulberry Never Blinks

This is the stump of a paper mulberry tree that I cut down five weeks ago (when I still thought it was a variety of maple), and today I realized how ruthlessly invasive the species really is. It seems to have been barely slowed down by the near-complete removal of the tree. I've learned that the stump itself needs to be removed before the plant is to be gotten rid of, but this goal is not realistic where I find this one. A native of east asia, the paper mulberry or Broussonetia papyrifera is an extreme example of an invasive species and disrupts ecosystems all over the world. Its pollen is a major cause for allergies, but its fruit is edible. It's strange that these have grown all around me for many years, but I'm only learning about them this summer.