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A new homeowner owner is experiencing significant anxiety over their house mere months after collecting the keys and unearthing a "disaster" lurking beneath their floorboards.

Moving house is known to be one of the most taxing and stressful processes anyone can go through. When purchasing a property, these troublesome experiences can be further amplified by the apparently endless paperwork, intimidating surveys, complex logistics and additional hurdles.

One couple believed they'd struck gold several months back by securing their dream home; a 1904 Edwardian property. They commissioned a survey which flagged that a small plant had sprouted from the skirting board below the bay window.

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They "didn't think too much of it and thought it managed to seed itself in the slightly loose skirting" but soon discovered "how wrong" they were. In the Reddit forum Gardening UK, they shared a post entitled "my Mahonia nightmare - unwanted indoor plant - how to eradicate?"

They explained: "In the front garden/drive, there are quite a few Mahonia plants (Oregon Grape, according to the PictureThis app). Very early on, we removed one nearest the house, but we uncovered the true disaster hiding under our floorboards.

"Upon taking the radiator off, we knew something was seriously wrong. After lifting the flooring and floorboards, we uncovered the disaster. Turning to my trusty PictureThis app again, it said we had Swamp Horsetail! Upon much googling, I was truly scared as it is a nightmare to get rid of."

The couple have examined their property and learned "the stems have found their way through the air gaps between the bricks" meaning they "don't have access to it".

After "chipping off some of the rendered plinth at the front of the house", they managed to locate the entry point and discovered "a bright yellow blob with a stem of the same type of the spaghetti inside that was thankfully misidentified as horsetails."

They turned to Reddit seeking guidance on eliminating the unwelcome growth. They've reinstalled their flooring after extracting as many of the stems as possible and are hoping to avoid lifting them once more "until necessary".

They continued: "At some point, we're going to insulate the joists and renovate the room at which point we can confirm [the plant] is dead, so we can only access the root/stem from outside, as the main plant has been removed.

"Do I have to do anything else, or should I use some type of poison? I understand they self-seed, so we will make sure to remove any seedlings."

Fellow gardening and horticulture fans were eager to weigh in. Many highlighted the need for weed killer and removing any roots, while another user flagged a concern regarding the brickwork.

They penned: "The plant has managed to get into the house via loose brickwork in the wall, if that was secure it wouldn't have rooted there. If I'm understanding the image correctly the root is not that big, it obvs had shoots growing in the dark under floor boards, the root in the wall looks relatively small.

"Next steps would be to contact a builder to assess the wall and how it got in in the first place, and apply some root kill product, I'm not up on what specifically to use."