The invasion of the giant hogweed is one of the many environmental disasters brought on by Soviet centralized planning

See The giant hogweed isn’t just an invasive plant: It’s a metaphor for what is happening to much of this country by Maria Antonova in The NY Times. She is a journalist and science writer. Excerpt:

"The invasion is one of the many environmental disasters brought on by Soviet centralized planning. After World War II, Soviet agronomists, keen to quickly rebuild the country’s agriculture industry, thought that the plant’s impressive biomass could make it a good crop to feed livestock. Seeds were distributed throughout the country.

Hogweed contains a high concentration of furanocoumarins, substances that cause severe burns and blisters when affected areas of skin are exposed to sunlight. Even so, the plant was grown nationwide. By the 1980s, when the plant began infiltrating central Russia’s wilderness, tests showed that cows fed on hogweed produced poor-tasting milk. Efforts to make the plant less toxic failed."

"Russia is the biggest country on Earth and both the state and the people take pride in the size of its territory — “from the southern seas to the polar fringes,” as the current national anthem goes. That quiet emptiness, the enormousness of Russia, has been infiltrated in recent decades by an alien force: the giant hogweed.

This invader, an exceptionally tall plant with a toxic sap that can cause third-degree burns and blindness"

"In the summer, the giant hogweed assumes the look of dill on steroids; its coffee-table sized leaves create thickets impossible to pass without a hazmat suit. In the winter, it desiccates into a brown skeleton. Outside Moscow, the hogweeds are often the only visible landmarks over white fields, ominous umbrellas standing in the snow like War of the Worlds troops poised to march. Officials have begun to refer to overgrown areas as “contaminated.”"