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Re: Melaleuca

At 08:00 8/04/97 -0500, you wrote:

>In southern Florida Melaleuca has become the most obnoxious pest. It has spread
>to almost every area and forms an almost impenetrable wall of vegetation which
>excludes all native plants. A continuing eradication program can barely keep up
>with its spread.

The melaleuca involved in Florida is M quinquenervia, from the east
coast of Australia and also New Guinea.

Another Aussie which travelled overseas and had a big impact is M 
ericafolia (? I've probably got the name wrong!), the manuka, which 
now covers a fair amount of riverflat country in New Zealand to the 
exclusion of much else.  However this happened a fair while ago (like 
hundreds of thousands of years at least), so it's not usually 
considered a pest!

Occasionally other melaleucas, planted as ornamentals away from their 
natural habitat, have caused problems by invading native heathland in 
their own country  -- for example, M hypericifolia and even the 
extremely popular garden plant M armillaris.

Melaleucas are far from the worst offenders in this respect though.  
Locally (around Sydney) the worst native weed trees are probably 
Pittosporum undulatum and Acacia baileyii (cootamundra wattle).  The 
former is actually a local, naturally occuring along rain-forest 
gulleys, but due to disturbance such as additional drainage and 
nutrients from built-up areas, it tends to invade dry eucalypt 
woodland.

John
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