Re: Soliva pterosperma - A light has dawned
"Randall, Rod" wrote:
>
> Peter was quite right about this plant being a weedy little sod
> but I'm totally amazed as to why anyone would even say they grew it.
>
> Its a real pain, quite literally, to any gardener unfortunate enough to have
> it in their lawns. Its a fairly bland little plant with small fern like
> leaves and tiny
> nonscript flowers. When it sets seed though, boy does everyone know!
>
> Kids all have to wear shoes on the ovals (playing fields) and in real bad
> patchs
> my old dog just refuses to walk as you can pick up just hundreds of the tiny
> seed
> each with a needle sharp prickle pointing straight up.
Rod
Your graphic description suddenly rang a loud bell. New Zealand has been
cursed with another South American species, Soliva sessilis (origin
Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentine and Chili) which is to us the
dreaded Onehunga weed (Onehunga is a suburb of Auckland pronounced not
wunhunga but approximately onaehunga). We also have acquired a couple of
its other equally unfriendly relatives which are of limited
distribution. but not, curiously, S. pterosperma.
I think I have finally got rid of it out of all my lawn after years of
battle. There is actually a specific weedkiller sold here for it called
Prickle Weedkiller. This can be safely used on lawns, but does no good
unless applied before the plants begin to flower, and this so often gets
forgotten.
However, the new lawn care regime we have adopted from recommendations
in Organic Gerdening seems to have finally put paid to it. It happens to
be an annual and as it requires a bit of bare ground to germinate it is
only a problem on sparse lawns which have such bare spaces. With the
combination of feeding my lawns annually with compost and cutting at
about twice the conventional height we have now so much strengthened up
the turf the weed is no longer able to get a foothold on our lawns and
bare feet are quite safe through summer(Yay).
I cannot conceive anybody consciously distributing the seed unless they
had a nasty sense of humour.
Moira
--
Tony & Moira Ryan <theryans@xtra.co.nz>
Wainuiomata,
New Zealand (astride the "Ring of Fire" in the SW Pacific).
