By Dominic Vorreiter. Word Count: 539

Working With Ginninderry and Weeding

This year I worked with the Ginninderry Conservation Trust in their Conservation Corridor that contains the Western Border of the ACT and NSW. 

(Photo Credit: Google Maps, 2022)

For two hours I helped workers at the Trust remove Verbascum Mullein, an invasive weed that looks like this.

(Photo Credit: Me, 2022)

Verbascum and it’s issues

Verbascum presents a wide range of issues to the health of native plants and crops. Verbascum leaves a wide, spread outwards, and angle downwards into the pistil (center), Verbascum grows to be large and spreads quickly, it can dominate the landscape and stop other smaller native plants from getting adequate sunlight, and rain, and as such it chokes them out. Luckily, Verbascum is quite easy to remove with a mattock, (as pictured)

(Photo Credit: Me, 2022)

as it can be easily dug into and removed. However due to how fast spreading it is, hand weeding is only effective at stopping small localized areas.

Problems with weeds and Verbascum

If you’re reading this, I imagine you’re already aware of the issue of weeds for both native plants, agriculture, native animals. If not, I’ll make it quick, Invasive Weeds are often fast-spreading and dominate the ecological niche they find themselves in, while it is commonly believed that weeds have to be non-native to be invasive, this is a misconception. If a plant is transported from one area to another, it may find itself thriving in this area, and will take advantage of the new land. In doing so they take away resources from other plants which leads to other plant species dying, or having their liveable zone shrink. Furthermore, many weeds are not safe for consumption and as such many herbivores are unable to eat them, and with the dying of native plants, many herbivorous creatures are also pushed out of their niche looking for new food sources and can cause ecological damage to other sites they move to. Because of the potential ecological harm of weeds, methods of dealing with them are continuously looked into and there are many ways to deal with weeds; there is no one solution for weeds. While we were able to clear a significant portion of Verbascum, it took time and manpower that the Trust doesn’t have consistent access to the manpower needed to quote our supervisor

“Yeah, the amount of Verbascum I could clear in two hours would have very little impact”–Bridie Noble

Furthermore several weeds such as St John’s Wort are unable to be hand removed due to their extensive root structure. Unfortunately due to how widespread Verbascum is in the corridor, full eradication is not possible, and the Trust will have to focus on containing, and preventing it from spreading further.

Benefits of Verbascum

To conclude, I’d like to touch on an interesting aspect of Verbascum I came across in my research; Verbascum is often used as an ingredient in herbal medicine in North America, Europe and Asia and is effective as an anti-inflammatory. Not only that, but there has been research into the positive effects of weeds in Grasslands, which the Corridor is. As such, a possible avenue for the future of the Trust and the Corridor is to use the Verbascum, rather than just eradicate it as this is a much more feasible venture.

References

Eland, R. 2021. Weed Management Plan. Ginninderry Conservation Trust

Maclaren, C et al. 2020. An ecological future for weed science to sustain crop production and the environment. A review. Agronomy for Sustainable Development, 40, 24.

Martin-Fores, I et al. 2017. Weed abundance is positively correlated with native plant diversity in grasslands of southern Australia. PLoS One, 12, e0178681.

Naughton, M. 2007. St John’s Wort. NSW DPI

Vogl, S et al. 2013. Ethnopharmacological in vitro studies on Austria’s folk medicine–an unexplored lore in vitro anti-inflammatory activities of 71 Austrian traditional herbal drugs. J Ethnopharmacol, 149, 750-71.