Weeds CRC: Enviroweeds Archive Titles

Please click on a letter to list all weeds in archive beginning with that letter.

Tithonia diversifolia - Japanese sunflower
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Date: Fri, 03 Oct 2003
From: Greg Brown <g.browncaloundra.qld.gov.au>

Can anyone point me in the direction - or send me a copy or a link - to information about Japanese Sunflower (Tithonia diversifolia). I've got someone asking me for information for a literature review (reasonably scientific - ie for a TAFE course) they are completing on the species. So any research papers, technical information sheets, etc would be great.

Department of Natural Resources and Mines (QLD) has a general info sheet if anyone's interested

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Date: Fri, 03 Oct 2003
From: <g.browncaloundra.qld.gov.au>

Another point I forgot to add is can someone tell me if Tithonia diversifolia is Japanese Sunflower or Mexican Sunflower - or is mexican Sunflower Tithonia rotundifolia?

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Date: Fri, 03 Oct 2003
From: Rod Randall <RPRandallagric.wa.gov.au>

Tithonia diversifolia (Hemsl.) A.Gray
Common Names:
tree marigold, Mexican sunflower, Japanese sunflower, matala, Mexikaanse sonneblom, girasol Mexicano

Tithonia rotundifolia (Mill.) S.F.Blake
Common Names:
rooisonneblom, red sunflower, clavel de muerto, flor amarilla, girasol, and Mexican sunflower

I really think they should work to the botanical name rather than ask for a lit search on a common name. Both species are present in Queensland.

There is a wealth of data on both species on the web including the Global Compendium of Weeds at www.hear.org

Tradescantia fluminensis - Wandering Jew
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This is such a great resource for gathering info from experts around the world! I am just wondering if anyone has any comments on the effectiveness of flame guns on Wandering jew infestations or any other handy hints for removal. It is in dense mats under coastal banksia and southern mahogony south coast bushland, pretty swampy/damp situation.

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Several ways to tackle this - but i have found raking the trad into piles, covering with black plastic to compost down, then flame weeding the fragments as they start to reshoot. Going straight into flame weeding is just too time consuming as there's too much moisture in large masses, but physical removal and flaming small fragments does well.

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A chemical option is a light spray of Glyphosate at the recommended rate on a cool day which works fine if there are no natives in amongst it. We visited one site where the brush turkeys were raking out the Trad piles and spreading it all over again. If you are a competent operator careful spraying is a lot easier than raking and the Trad disappears down to nothing. I have wasted, and seen many hours of wasted time, manually clearing monocultures of Trad that could have quite readily and safely been sprayed without any waste disposal problems, (NOTE: if you are not experienced with sprayers stay well clear until you have a bit of experience, as a misdirected spray gun can do a lot of damage, also make sure that you follow the Pesticide Act requirements for training).

If you are careful, you create a gap for Commelina, Basket Grass, and other native groundcovers to expand, and they take the place of the Trad pretty quickly but then die back in the dry spells allowing other longer lived natives to get started in the reduced competition.

Of course, do not spray an area larger than you can safely maintain with the available resources, and be careful of erosion potential.

If it is in a moist wet area use one of the several “frog friendly” formulations licenced for use in/over waterways, although in highly sensitive areas you are probably better off going with the manual options to be safe. The above comments are directed more at moderate to highly degraded sites where extensive monocultures of Trad can be found as a suppressing blanket.

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I spoke to a lady in Belgrave near the Dandenong Ranges in Victoria that has been fighting a war against Ivy and Wandering Trad (Tradescantia albiflora) in her backyard for twenty years.

She conducted an experiment at her own home. She placed a pile of Wandering trad with no soil into a plastic rubbish bin and put the lid on and then some canvas over the lid. This was left closed for three years.

After opening the Trad was still thriving. No sunlight, additional water or soil. It must have been able to survive living on the moisture recycled in a Terrarium type environment.

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Did she actually check to see if it was still viable? Ie plant some in a pot and look for growth.

Seems such a waste to wait for three years and never actually prove anything....

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Having composted a lot of trad under black plastic, I'm very skeptical of this story - or maybe the jokes on me and you are simply submitting it as an example of urban weed myths?

I think we are still quite ignorant of a lot a very basic weed physiology, structure, morphology ( I am) and there is a lot of heresay, anecdote, even published information etc that may or not be true. We quite often know how to poison a weed (and this may be the most important thing) but do not know what is going on underground, or we base it on questionable theories of sap flow, growth phase, tuber structure etc. Then we have myths and superstitions about horrific growth rates, immortal tuber survival, immense propagule numbers, etc. It is a bit medieval.

It is a subject that interests me - the propensity for hyperbole in weed stories. I wonder if other subscribers have any.

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It does seem a little unbelievable. I had a thought that perhaps the plastic bin may have been light in colour or relatively thin plastic and as such it would not have been completely dark inside.... and so the weed could have had some light to go with the little bit of moisture in the bin to help it survive.

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Its possibly true, but as the material that survived was never tested to see if it was actually alive by growing it on its hard to make any definitive statement about the "experiment".

I do know one example of a cladode of an Opuntia (prickly pear) that was kept on a desktop as an "ornament" for many years, never watered just bare. Memory tells me after 10 something years the cladode was dumped into a potplant along with something else in this persons office and it immediately struck and started growing. Now that's tenacious!

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Hhmmmmm the urban mythes of weeds, if I had a dollar for every good weed story......

In my experience all have turned out to be miscommunications (intentional or otherwise).

The real reason for my posting is coincidentally today I heard a good news Wandering creeper story. A volunteer in a group I work with on a golf course told me he had virtually eradicated WC from his garden by being persistent and constantly pulling it out (and he was well on the way with angled onion too). I hope this one isnt a myth.

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We have found the best way to remove weeds that are highly invasive is to hand pull the weeds and place them in bags and incinerate them. Obviously you have to continue the program of spraying and pulling for a number of years as the germinates continue to come up.

I would be very concerned if a plant that was out of water and soil and sitting on a desk some where survived for 10 years. I can't even get the fruit I bring to work for smoko to look edible after 2 hours let alone 10 years, what hope have we got?

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Date: Wed, 11 Jan 2006
From: Alexandra Shackleton <ashackleton@geelongcity.vic.gov.au>

I can vouch for a piece of Tiger Pear that is sitting on a colleague's desk in a disposable sandwich container, in an air-conditioned, artificially lit office. It's been there for a good 2 years and whilst looking a little shrivelled in parts, it's most definitely alive. One of our local DPI officers had the same plant in the office and also watered it after 3 plus years and the thing sprang to life without missing a beat! Thankfully the Cochineal Beetle is striking a blow on this one.

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Dr Heather Adamson (formerly School of Biological Sciences, Macquarie University) used to use Tradescantia fluminensis (then T. albiflora) as a case study in her plant physiology course I still have a audio tape of hers on the subject somewhere in the archives.

From memory, her research suggested that a severed piece of Trad withdraws it resources into the top node, and can survive (and remain viable) for up to 7 months under suitable conditions. Heather and her husband Don (also in the Department, and an early advocate for bush regeneration) retired some years ago, but the Department should have access to their original research and course notes.

On a related topic, most of the bush regenerations I have known/employed/trained over the past 20 years are definitely ignorant of plant physiology - and generally don't want to know. I find this astonishing. What worries me particularly, is that many of these people in Weed or Environmental Committees/groups which apply for public funding. Funds received are often not used to best advantage because the applicants have limited knowledge of plant physiology and related ecological issues... If you don't understand how a plant functions, then you may be wasting your time using inappropriate techniques/herbicides etc.

Over the years I have been astonished to find out that most regenerators could not tell you when the common weeds they treat regularly flower or fruit (which seems to me pretty basic). Starting out in the industry with the National Trust in 1986, I have sent out numerous questionnaires, organised workshops, reprinted relevant articles in our newsletter, held in house seminars to promote knowledge in this field. Interest is generally confined to a very small number of people - usually those looking to move on to other things in environmental management. Plant identification workshops are always popular though.

Is this lack of basic scientific knowledge/rigour or does it give some indication of personalities drawn to bush regeneration?

This email will probably elicit responses from those bush regenerators who are interested and who do have good supporting knowledge - good on them - but the majority simply don't.

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Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2006
From: Alexandra Shackleton <ashackleton@geelongcity.vic.gov.au>

Without wanting to get into too much of a debate, I think the area of professional depth and development reflects a number of factors.

If someone is entering the industry from an inexperienced point, and has gone through say TAFE-like training, they will have had very limited exposure to the more scientific facet of plant physiology (I'm not talking here about flowering/fruiting etc). If they have gone through say full horticultural or science based degrees ...... well, they're a rarity in the industry. In my opinion, so long as the industry consistently pays low wages and offers limited career opportunities due to its small size, we're unlikely to see great changes here. Those who do stay long enough to build up good knowledge-bases are few and far between .... the so-called average Australian income is $52K and there's not too many getting that in our game!

Just on funding - the issue of longer-term funding, and its SURITY is a perennial one (no pun intended!). Unfortunately the best laid plans end up as a mess when the funding you'd earmarked for spraying in Spring turns up in January leaving you with less-than-ideal control methods. Maybe we need to give the NHT decision-makers the lessons in plant physiology too!?

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Over the years I have been astonished to find out that most regenerators could not tell you when the common weeds they treat regularly flower or fruit (which seems to me pretty basic).

I'm no longer even remotely astonished to see how environmental science graduates (and a lot of other science graduates) who have gained NHT and other funded positions responsible for large projects, can not even ID the most common weeds in the region (let alone have any idea about flowering times or growth habits). Many can't tell the natives from the exotics. It isn't something that seems to be valued when the jobs are handed out.

IMO plant knowledge is seriously undervalued across the board, at least in the region where I work. Success in a project equates to funds expended on the ground, regardless of the survival of seedlings or the outcome of a weed eradication program. I would very much like to see good regeneration practices rather than the heavy footed, destructive management we're seeing now.

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Date: Mon, 04 Jul 2005
From: Neil Tucker <neilt@pipeline.com.au>

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I've used a flame weeder on trad - works really well, though it's very slow going the thicker and more of it there is. Works best when there's just scattered bits, not layered - have had 100% success rates in many areas. Have had really good regeneration of native grasses following treatments and it also seems to work well on ehrharta. Can't see why you wouldn't have similar results with steam.

I've had some problems with the fittings icing up after long periods of use, so best used for shorter periods (1/2 hour) then give it a chance to thaw out a bit - maybe some have overcome this problem or it's just the flameweeder I've used.

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Recently there have been a number of specimens collected in NZ of what appears to be a giant form of Tradescantia fluminensis (syn T. albiflora). I collected some last week that has stems 8 mm diameter and leaves 150 x 50 mm. This is about 3 times larger than ususal. It doesn't appear to integrade with standard T. fluminensis (of which we have no shortage), and flowers have not yet been seen. Any experience of this in Australia?

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This sounds like it could be Pollia crispata (Commelinaceae) which is an Australia native species. Are the leaves are more yellow-green than what you expect for Trad?

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This large-leafed form of T. fluminensis has been around as a garden plant in NSW for as long as I can remember, which is 40-50 years. It's also known in a variegated form with white-striped leaves; the plain green plants may be a reversion.

In the Sydney-Central Coast region of NSW it seems to occasionally 'naturalise' in the sense of spreading vegetatively a little beyond where it has usually originated as dumped garden waste, but I have never seen it deep in bushland, as I have often seen the common small-leafed 'trad', e.g. in the Wollemi wilderness 20 km from the nearest settlement (river-borne?).

There is something of a taxonomic vacuum around this group of tradescantias. More research in their southern Brazilian homeland is badly needed. The only recent comment I can find on their taxonomy is in the New RHS Dictionary (1992), written presumably by Commelinaceae specialist David Hunt, a contributor. The entry appears to be for T. fluminensis sensu lato, and the description gives leaf measurement ranges of 1.5-12[!] cm for length, 1-3.5 cm for width. However, Hunt comments:
". . .The true T. fluminensis is a rhizomatous perenn. from the region of Rio de Janeiro with subpetiolate lvs tending to the larger end of the range quoted. In different clones the lves are all green, or variegated white or yellow. The popular cultivar with sessile, white-striped lvs. known as T. albiflora 'Albovittata', is intermediate in habit between T. fluminensis and T. crassula. The decorative, non-rhizomatous, annual or short-lived plant with small, yellow-variegated lvs and slender, often purple-tinted stems, known as T. fluminensis 'Argenteo-variegata' is not this species; it may be T. mundula Kunth or T. anagallidea Seub. from S Brazil-N Argentina; individual plants are self-fertile, but most seedlings have normal green leaves. . . "

It is possible that our large-leafed trad is a reversion of the cultivated 'Albovittata' and so would have the same taxonomic status. Likewise the common small-leafed trad may be a reversion of 'Argenteo-variegata' (or similar cultivars 'Aurea' and 'Variegata') and would have the same taxonomic status as those.

I confess that I may not be completely up to date with the taxonomic literature, and there may be some recent publication that throws more light on the problem. I hope the projected Flora of Australia treatment takes the trouble to untangle the situation -- they have sometimes glossed over such problems in non-native group

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Here's a response to an email I sent to an organisation probably best equipped to determine whether Wandering Jew is offensive or not. Prior to this I thought it's name had roots in a slightly sympathetic mythology of the Jews in search of a homeland.... I stand corrected

I have been forwarded a copy of the enquiry you sent to the private Jewish organisation, the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, on the subject of the "Wandering Jew".

Very occasionally, this organisation, which is the representative organisation of the Jewish community in Australia, receives messages of concern with this common name. As it is, I find most people are now referring to it as the "Wandering Creeper".

The idea of a Wandering Jew was intended to be offensive, historically. There is absolutely no positive connotation to the term in English usage.

Anything you can do to help remove the offensive name from common usage would be most welcome.

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I would have preferred some more explanation than that from Mr Jones. How does he know it was intended to be offensive? His response suggests that he knows who invented the term, and that he knows the sentiments of the inventor. I'm sure those of us following this discussion would like to know more about where the name came from.

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I think the point is not what the original intent was but that the term is racially offensive as defined by the group that it affects. As non-Jewish people I think we are not in a position to argue this - if they are offended by it then it is offensive. Further, even if it is offensive to only part of that community it is nevertheless offensive and we should respect that.

I really feel that some perspective is required - racial vilification is a very serious matter (original intent notwithstanding). To me changing the common name of a weed species is a small thing compared to racially offensive terminology.

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This entry in 'Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable' throws light on the name.

"Wandering Jew, The. The central figure of the widespread late medieval legend, which tells of a Jew who insulted or spurned Christ when he was bearing the cross to Calvary and was condemmed to wander over the face of the earth until Judgment Day." [3 more paragraphs of historical detail, but this is the essence of it]

So it seems that the name, a catch-phrase of earlier centuries, does encapsulate the hostility to Jews based on religious belief once prevalent among Christians, especially Catholics.

I offer this purely as a small contribution to historical truth. My personal instincts tend to be against the censoring of common usage, though in the consulting work I do on reference books I do not accept names like 'kaffir plum' (kaffir being the S African equivalent of 'nigger' -- but 'kaffir lime' could be a different question, the 'kaffir' in this name allegedly coming via another etymological route).

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This is a pretty ridiculous exercise in political correctness gone astray. What's next calling women "womyn" because a few folks are somehow insulted? This has been suggested, but obviously not accepted. How about renaming Leucaena leucocephala, which is call "haole koa" here in Hawaii, the equivalent of "nigger koa" to "[insert some contrived PC name here] koa"? I am a "haole" and am not offended. Where does it end? If you don't like it, call it something else (or as Rod Randall would say, use scientific names), but don't force your mis-guided prejudice on me. The people pushing the changing of names are the true prejudiced ones. The rest of us are not interested in looking at the world through racial glasses. My 2 cents.

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Yawn....this could go on for ever. How about we all call it Trad and just get on with eradicating it. I could have cleared a good sized area in the time it has taken to read the emails on this subject.

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Last time this discussion took up valuable weeding time, someone suggested innocently that they had always thought it was called "Wandering Dew". Sounds good to me.

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Naming issues arise a lot, for a host of reasons. Inevitably we come to the conclusion that using scientific names addresses the problems adequately. So lets just do it, always if possible.

In our working lives, we are confronted with monumental ecological and other problems caused by exotic organisms. Many of us have come to learn that the best way to get ahead is by avoiding or minimising the side-issues. I have always taken steps to avoid using "wandering jew" and instructed staff to act likewise, in all publications, correspondence and advice.

In many situations for many people, the full scientific name is too much of a mouthfull. So suggestions like"wandering dew" and "wandering creeper" have been made. These are mostly very ambiguous and I oppose their use (I remember in the 1980s reading from an Australian crop/pasture weed db that had 36 separate taxa listed as "shitweed". Possibly perfectly justifiable from the point of view of the landowner but you see the point). "Trad" is potentially horrendously ambiguous (just ask any historian), and word minimisation only lea t confu...

So whats wrong with "Tradescantia"? We've all gotten used to using thousands of other scientific names as common names. In New Zealand the word "Tradescantia" is now taken by most to mean the plant in question. Should satisfy the trad and non-trad among us.

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Some years ago I had the pleasure of doing volunteer bush weeding in Australia with an old Jewish lady who for reasons she did not explain objected to Tradescantia being called Wandering Jew.

She, like many a Jew who over 60 odd generations had wandered away from Palestine, was a great asset to the land she lived in. Then something came over her daughter who decided to settle in Palestine and her parents went there to spend their last years.

So those lovely wandering Jews became returning Zionists and part of a greater plague on the world than the seven plagues of Egypt.

P.S. How excited I was some years back when Chinese Scrub appeared on my reveg site!

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I have just scanned a list of weed pictures recently requested by an "Enviroweeder" and a common name "jumped" out at me.

Tradescantia albiflora was referred to by the common name of "Wandering Jew". Quite a while ago there was a discussion (Dec 2002) via this forum that we discourage the usage of this name as there are people being offended by it.

I've often heard Traescantia referred to as "wandering creeper". (It is also referred to by this common name in Kate Blood's 2001 book, "Environmental Weeds. A Field Guide for SE Australia" pg. 122.)

I believe that this was the "most popular" alternative common name put forward during the previous discussion.

I'd like to re-encourage all Enviroweeders to make this change in any publications they might put together.

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I have never heard it called wandering creeper other than in Kate's book. We always call it Trad or Tradescantia - orally and in writing respectively.

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I believe the opposition to the long-established and internationally accepted use of the name 'Wandering Jew' is misinformed, for the reasons that various people (including Jews) pointed out last time.

I therefore would like to re-encourage all Enviroweeders NOT to perpetuate this.

I think this highlights the fault with the attitude that a plant which becomes a weed in your own particular part of the world is intrinsically a bad organism and that any name linking it to a person, nation, race etc is a slur on them. Wandering Jew is an amazing plant that deserves respect rather than hatred; it's just that we humans have created a problem by putting it in the wrong places. Think about it in the same was as, say, eucalypts that have become weeds in California or Portugal. I, as an Australian, am not offended when people in other nations give weeds from Australia names that include the word, 'Australian'.

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To avoid offence, particularly racist offence, my circle of environmentalists and bush regenerators in Hume City Council, Kinglake Landcare, La Trobe University, and various Friends groups etc have always sought to avoid reference to "Niggerheads" or other offensive terms. Common names vary widely anyway, which is why it is preferable to use or include the botanical name, and it does not hurt to promote a more acceptable alternative. It is all part of saving the planet and creating a better world!

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Well said Graeme, sounds to me like political correctness gone mad!

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We are a conservation reserve just south of Hastings on the Mornington Peninsula. We have a problem with Tradescantia fluminensis on the edge of the creek, right on the limit of tidal influence, We have manually removed a large amount directly from the waters edge. Are there any suggestions as to what might work to kill the remainder of this weed whilst mimimalising impact on the creeklife. Chemicals/solarisation etc?

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I have had an idea to get chicken/egg farms to feed wandering jew to their chooks. I know chooks love to eat the stuff as my own chooks devoured it, every bit of it. None ever came up in my garden from bits left uneaten. As we have so much of the stuff infesting our bush and most backyards it would be great to make good use of it. As convenor of a friends group, I can say that we would be happy to rake it up into piles for pick up. Does anyone know of any research done on the effects of feeding this plant to chooks? I know that Zoo's take some plants for browse material such as bamboo and others. Has anyone had any experience with this sort of system of environmental weed removal for a further use?

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1. at least one Tradescantia sp. can cause skin allergies, especially on tummies of dogs in hot weather, don't know about any other effects
2. commercial battery hens are fed on pellets and commercial food, they probably do not have the means to feed any fresh plant material to cage birds

3. the Perth Zoo also takes several weedy species including Arundo donax to feed the elephants but schemes such as this should be seen as a "bonus" rather than a means of eradication - only suitable for those in the right location and with suitable means of transporting any plant material re other weeds used

5. in the USA, kudzu is used to make a variety of items such as baskets (which barely makes a dent in the infestations)

6. best example may be from Australia, St Johns wort harvested for export to make herbal remedy

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While I am no expert, I too have fed that plant to my home chooks without illeffect. I was helping aquaintenecs clear a yard and came home with my Suzuki stn wagon back filled to the ceiling mostly with Tradescantia (~1m cu). The chooks destoyed it all and were fine. I tend to give my chooks lots of weeds to destroy. What they don't eat they tend to stomp all over and scratch to death so vegetatively reproducing plants, like this are totally destroyed. Just on a warning note on this method. A friend grows amazing crops of parsley, and silverbeet in his garden which I also collect for my chooks. The seeds from these do make it through the chook (and rabbit - I also keep these with my chooks) process. I compost the remaining material - reasonably hot - but the seeds of these 2 plus Galium - which to my amazement my rabbits eat, and probably some others do survive to resprout from the compost. However, as such compost would be deadly to most native plants one would trust it were only used in non-native gardens, not bush areas, so this should not be such a problem I guess there is some problem with roots, nodes etc left behind in the bush resprouting. So as a total removal method you need to monitor resprouting etc

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From memory the reaction to Tradescantia is to an insect that lives in it rather than the weed. I guess the chooks would eat that too.

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Good idea, I'm all for value-added production, or vertical integration as they term this sort of next-step processing of your own produce. I would be pretty concerned though if the wandering jew were to be transported any distance, the potential for spread by dropping pieces is high. Just look at the roadside vegetation in certain farming areas where farm produce is trucked to silos, markets etc, and see the region's crops well represented.

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A bush regenerator in the Mountains has been feeding our Trad to his chooks on & off for several years without any ill effects.

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May I suggest 'donating' the Tradescantia, and any other green weeds to a local school or community group that keeps free range chooks. As previously suggested containment during transport would be vital. Brunswick Community Chook Group at CERES in East Brunswick is always happy to take this sort of supplemental feed, as long as it has not been sprayed. I'm sure there would be some group/school closer to Mullum Mullum Creek that would also love the greens.

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Tradescantia is also consumed avidly by at least some varieties of domestic ducks. I have seen two cases of large backyard infestations in Sydney area that have each had two or three ducks (I think Muscovies) turned loose. The results looked a bit like the Battle of Passchendale but there wasn't a skerrick of WJ left alive. If someone works out how to drove ducks (probably easier than chooks) along Sydney bushland gully bottoms for some crash grazing, it might even be a viable management tool.

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I'm a new contributor to enviroweeds and I'm beginning with a question. Does anyone have any idea of the native provenance of either Tradescantia fluminensis or Anredera cordifolia? Nearly all the information I can find on this pair is about their distributions as weeds or as horticultural favourites. The floras all mention South America as their home, but what country? what kinds of country? what kinds of community? Or is one (or both) a cultigen derived from wild relatives?

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Tradescantia fluminensis
(Tradescantia albiflora is often mistaken as Tradescantia fluminensis) is native to southeast Brazil northern Argentina and Uruguay.
Some useful references (many still available to purchase ie Blood and Muyt)

Blood, K. (2001) Environmental weeds: A field guide20 for SE Australia. C.H. Jerram & Associates

Muyt, A. (2001). Bush Invaders of South-East Australia. R.G. and F.J. Richardson, Victoria

Clement, E.J. and Foster, M.C. (1994) Alien plants of the British Isles. Botanical Society of the British Isles, London.

Standish, R.J., Robertson, A.W. and Williams, P.A. (2001). The impact of an invasive weed Tradescantia fluminensis on native forest regeneration. Journal of Applied Ecology. 38(6):1253-1263

Batianoff, G.N. and Butler, D.W. (2002). Assessment of Invasive naturalized plants in south-east Queensland. Appendix. 1 Plant Protection Quarterly 17, 27-34.

Molina, A.R. (1998) Malezas presentes en cultivos de verano.Vol 1. [Verano means 'summer' or 'dry season', so the title is basically, "Summer weeds of cultivation"]

Roy, B., Popay, I., Champion, P., James, T., and Rahman, A. (1998). An illustrated guide to the common weeds of New Zealand. New Zealand Plant Protection Society, R.G. & F.J. Richardson.

Hefliger, E., Kuhn, U., HE4met-Ahti, L., Cook, C.D.K. Faden, R. and Speta, F. (1982) Monocot Weeds 3. Ciba Geigy Ltd., Basel, Switzerland.

Blood, K. (2001) Environmental weeds: A field guide for SE Australia. C.H. Jerram & Associates.

Muyt, A. (2001). Bush Invaders of South-East Australia. R.G. and F.J. Richardson, Victoria

Henderson, L. (2001) Alien Weeds and Invasive Plants. Plant Protection Research Institute & Agricultural Research Council, South Africa.

Auld, B.A. and Medd, R.W. (1992) WEEDS, An illustrated botanical guide to the weeds of Australia. Inkata Press, Melbourne.

Carr, G.W., Yugovic, J.V. and Robinson, K.E. (1992). Environmental Weed Invasions in Victoria. Department of Conservation and Environment. Melbourne

Csurhes, S. and Edwards, R. (1998) Potential Environmental Weeds in Australia, Candidate Species For Preventative Control. Biodiversity Group, Environment Australia, Canberra, ACT.

Bromilow, C. 1995 Problem Plants of South Africa. Briza Publications, Arcardia, South Africa.

Roy, B., Popay, I., Champion, P., James, T., and Rahman, A. (1998). An illustrated guide to the common weeds of New Zealand. New Zealand Plant Protection Society, R.G. & F.J. Richardson.

Batianoff, G.N. and Butler, D.W. (2002). Assessment of Invasive naturalized plants in south-east Queensland. Appendix. 1 Plant Protection Quarterly 17, 27-34.

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Date: Tue, 3 Dec 2002
From: Hillary Cherry <hcherryozemail.com.au

In addition to Rod's plethora of information, here is a site that will lead you to the on-line version of Identification and Biology of Non-Native Plants in Florida's Natural Areas. http://aquat1.ifas.ufl.edu/identif.html This is a University of Florida publication that has information on the Category I invasive species in Florida (quite a few of which occur in Australia). There is ecological and life history information, in addition to a few references, that may be helpful to you for Tradescantia fluminensis (page 26-27).

In northern Florida, one place that T. fluminensis is particularly invasive is in shady, floodplain forests (bottomland hardwoods). There is no significant herbaceous layer in these woods, as there is constant scouring from floods, but Tradescantia is able to take hold and form dense, monospecific mats as thick as 30-50cm that are capable of altering water flow patterns and preventing native regeneration. And the problem is exacerbated by fragmentation - lots of downstream populations can rapidly take root if not controlled.

We did an herbicide trial the year before last (haven't published it yet but will soon :-) where we used Garlon 3A (triclopyr amine) and RoundUp (glyphosate). 95% control was achieved with 0.5% triclopyr amine after 30 days. The glyphosate at 0.5% showed less than 50% control after 30 days, however at 1.5% glyphosate averaged 80% control. Let me know if you need more info on this trial.

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Southeastern Brazil in the vicinity of Rio de Janeiro is the original source of T. fluminensis in the narrow sense of that name, according to the entry in the New RHS Dictionary of Gardening (1992). The Tradescantia entry would have been entirely the work of David Hunt, a fairly senior Kew taxonomist who is regarded as the world's greatest authority on Tradescantia and its allies. He tends to take a broad view of both species and genera, and has sunk the cultivated genera Campelia, Rhoeo, Setcreasea and Zebrina under Tradescantia. A careful reading of his comments on T. fluminensis seems to show that he regards it as highly variable, with some of the cultivated forms possibly the result of hybridism with another southern Brazilian species, T. crassula, and maybe that the complex still needs a lot of study. He allows a variation in leaf dimensions of 1.5-12 x 1-3.5 cm in T. fluminensis in the broadest sense, and comments that the 'true' T. fluminensis (by which I assume he means the nomenclatural type) has 'subpetiolate leaves tending to the larger end of the range quoted', which sounds a bit like the long-leaved, long-internode plants we occasionally find semi-naturalised as garden escapes, at least around Sydney.

Hunt does not recognise the name T. albiflora except by implication - it's not among the list of synonyms at the end of the genus treatment. Among cultivated tradescantias that I am familiar with, the short-leaved cultivar 'Variegata' comes closest in vegetative features to our common weedy 'trad', and I suspect it may have originated here as an all green reversion from that. He includes this cultivar under T. fluminensis without comment, but in the later (1996) RHS A-Z Encyclopaedia of garden plants T. albiflora 'Variegata' is treated as a synonym of T. fluminensis 'Variegata'.

I also had a look at Missouri BG's W3TROPICOS database to see if any wild collections of T. fluminensis showed up. Unfortunately it is biased toward South American countries where Missouri's botanists and associates have collected a lot, and Brazil gets a poor showing. Most of the collections of T. fluminensis listed there were from Paraguay and Bolivia, but it may be hard to tell if they were native or naturalised plants. Searching this database for T. albiflora returns only a nomenclatural reference, with no mention of current status or wild occurrences.

As far as I know there is no recently published taxonomic study of T. fluminensis and its allies.

By the way, does anyone know if our common weedy 'trad' sets seed here, or whether it only spreads vegetatively (which it does with amazing efficiency)?

Concerning Anredera cordifolia, Mabberley's Plant Book gives its origin as subtropical S America. I had a look at W3TROPICOS for this also and it cites collections from many countries, including the US, but the ones that looked most likely to be wild were from countries like Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay and Brazil (at medium altitudes). There were a lot from the highlands of Costa Rica but they seemed to be from weedy sites where there were any habitat notes.

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Do you remember the fascinating discussion last month on enviroweeds about Wandering Jew and chooks? (ducks too!) Find it summarised and illustrated in the News section of Blue Mountains City Council's new weeds website, Weeds of Blue Mountains Bushland, under the heading Wandering Jew? It's Chicken Feed!

Click on http://weedsbluemountains.org.au/news.asp and while you're there, check out the rest of our site. This is an evolving site, and we welcome comments and suggestions.

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Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2003
From: Margaret Stanley <StanleyMlandcareresearch.co.nz>

Thanks for all the comments and feedback on non-chemical weed control methods. I'd just like to share some info I found on tradescantia, given the number of comments I received about its shade tolerance. This comes from recent research on tradescantia in New Zealand.

Research by Rachel Standish (Standish, R. J. Robertson A. W., and Williams P. A. 2001. The impact of an invasive weed Tradescantia fluminensis on native forest vegetation. Journal of Applied Ecology 38:1253-1263.) shows the biomass of tradescantia is dependent on light levels * the trick is to reduce the biomass of tradescantia enough to let native seedlings through (esp. in NZ where many native seedlings are shade-tolerant).

Rachel's latest experimental research (Standish R 2002. Experimenting with methods to control Tradescantia fluminensis, an invasive weed of native forest remnants in New Zealand. NZ J Ecology 26(2): 161-170) shows that planting directly into tradescantia is just as effective and requires less labour than handing weeding and re-planting. It also excludes other light-demanding weeds from invading (if you are clearing areas). After 2.5 years, there was no difference between the survival of plants that were planted directly into tradescantia and those that were planted after hand/manual weeding.

Rachel suggests grouping plants in canopy gaps and minimising the gaps between plants could be an effective way of suppressing tradescantia and gaining canopy closure to exclude other weeds. Hopefully, more trials and a longer time-span might tell us more, but it sounds promising.

Trapa natans - Water Chestnut
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From: Stuart.Roberton@dpi.vic.gov.au
Sent: Wednesday, 23 April 2008

I'm trying to determine the distribution of Trapa natans in Australia for an upcoming fact sheet. The online herbarium isn't working at the moment, so can someone possibly tell me where Trapa natans has been recorded in Australia?

I'm aware that there may have been an outbreak in or around Perth - does anyone have information as to its past extent, and also its current status (current size, treatment method, or if its been eradicated).

I noticed Trapa natans is also listed in Redland Shire Council's planning scheme - does anyone know if it has naturalised in that region?

Feel free to email me directly if you wish: stuart.roberton@dpi.vic.gov.au

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From: Lloyd, Sandy
Sent: Wednesday, 23 April 2008

We have not had an outbreak in Perth. I did find a guy in NSW advertising water chestnut (Trapa natans) on his website a few years back, but when it was checked, he actually had something else, an Eleocharis sp. from memory.

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From: stephen.johnson@dpi.nsw.gov.au
Sent: Wednesday, 23 April 2008 2:06 pm

I refer you to a NSW DPI publication at the following web address

http://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/156660/water-caltrop-alert.pdf

NSW DPI is not aware of any incidences of the species in our state. My colleagues in Qld and the NT may be able to chat with you about if they have detected the species in their state and territory.

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From: Lauren Quinn
Sent: Thursday, 24 April 2008

I queried all the herbaria individually to search their records for this species (outside the online system), but none returned any results. As you may know from the Enviroweeds list, I recently sent out a link to an online survey I'm conducting on aquatic weed distribution (please see http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=I4jgx7s2t5mT0Mhddo2SIA_3d_3d if you haven't already completed it). Of the 135 responses I got from around Australia, only two people answered that they thought they'd seen Trapa natans, but admitted they weren't entirely sure. One respondent was answering for the Murrimbidgee catchment in Canberra, but didn't leave his/her name so I can't direct you to that person for follow-up. The other person didn't give a location.


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