31 January 2012

The war on weeds

| johnboy
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Territory and Municipal Services are telling the world about their herculean efforts to control weeds in the ACT:

Weed control from 2009 to 2011 included:
— 1,963 hectares of Blackberry;
— 1,618 hectares of Serrated Tussock;
— 1,598 hectares of St John’s Wort;
— 895 hectares of African Lovegrass;
— 615 hectares of Paterson’s Curse;
— 576 hectares of Chilean Needlegrass;
— 375 hectares of Sweet Briar;
— 269 hectares of Willow;
— 56 hectares of Tall African Lovegrass; and
— 938 hectares of other invasive weeds such as Nodding Thistly, Black Alder, Hawthorn and
Cotoneaster

And yet there’s still a lot of St John’s Wort and Blackberry around…

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Alderney said :

poetix said :

Tall African Lovegrass sounds so much nicer than Chilean Needlegrass. I see there is also a plain African Lovegrass; what’s the cut-off between normal and tall? And is someone is making up Nodding Thistly? Sounds like something from Enid Blyton.

Tall African Lovegrass is just African Lovegrass that hasn’t been cut for a while… 😉

I thought African Lovegrass was an R&B singer from south central LA.

Pity they are wasting their time on willows and blackberries

http://www.thefifthestate.com.au/archives/3974

VYBerlinaV8_is_back4:39 pm 31 Jan 12

1,963 hectares of blackberry? That’s a lot of jam…

tidalik said :

welkin31 said :

Is there a site with online photos of Canberra region weeds ?

http://www.weeds.org.au/cgi-bin/weedident.cgi?tpl=region.tpl&state=nsw&region=seh

Great resource – thanks!

Boy – what a job! I don’t envy the people trying to get rid of those invasive species.

welkin31 said :

Is there a site with online photos of Canberra region weeds ?

http://www.weeds.org.au/cgi-bin/weedident.cgi?tpl=region.tpl&state=nsw&region=seh

welkin31 said :

Is there a site with online photos of Canberra region weeds ?

There was a article with great photos on this blog last week about a big backyard weed crop in ‘Bundah. The “weed police” have since controlled it.

astrojax said :

what’s the yellow menace proliferating round mugga way and red hill i noticed the other week?

What does it look like? St Johns Wort is yellow but should be browning off now as it sets its seed. If it’s tall like hollyhocks, that’ll be Verbascum/Great Mullein. Rotten stuff. If it’s small ground-hugging yellow daisies, it could be Cape Weed or Fire Weed, both horrible noxious weeds too.

astrojax said :

what’s the yellow menace proliferating round mugga way and red hill i noticed the other week?

St Johns Wart is the yellow stuff. It’s all over Mt Wanniassa as well. It is a favourite herb of the alternatives who use it to garnish their wild mushrooms.

poetix said :

Tall African Lovegrass sounds so much nicer than Chilean Needlegrass. I see there is also a plain African Lovegrass; what’s the cut-off between normal and tall? And is someone is making up Nodding Thistly? Sounds like something from Enid Blyton.

Tall African Lovegrass is just African Lovegrass that hasn’t been cut for a while… 😉

what’s the yellow menace proliferating round mugga way and red hill i noticed the other week?

Typo for nodding thistles, a very common form of thistle. Thistles aren’t too bad really, they’re easily killed, some stock eat them, and there’s a view that they can actually do some good in damaged soil.

St Johns and Serrated Tussock are the two big bad nasties this season.

Is there a site with online photos of Canberra region weeds ?

Tall African Lovegrass sounds so much nicer than Chilean Needlegrass. I see there is also a plain African Lovegrass; what’s the cut-off between normal and tall? And is someone is making up Nodding Thistly? Sounds like something from Enid Blyton.

You can’t just decide to now control the weeds, spray a bit and bang, no more weeds. The dictum “one year’s seeds, seven years of weeds” is so true. They’ve neglected the weeds for, decades really. Now the job is humungous.

Look at the blackberry growth in any forest or river area for instance. And that African Lovegrass was actually mass-planted through Canberra as an ornamental grass, causing a long-term problem for this region as a whole. Ditto Serrated Tussock… farms in Bredbo are now so badly infested with that stuff, they’re subdividing and selling up, the land is useless. Driving into Canberra from Qbn, the farmland features huge amounts of Serrated.

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