you keep writing about rain..
It’s raining, it finally came, was building-up from about ten days..
at first was a temperate late October then the wind from the west came..
it was dry and extremely hot..
You slowly starting to know the winds, the ones coming from the south bringing rain while the ones coming from the north-west bringing hot weather and fires, like when in mid October:
Hot weather leads to numerous fires in NSW
16th October 2007
Firefighters from around NSW responded to bush and grass fires in various parts of the state today. Fires occurred in Tomago, Mt Kembla and Mt Colah which required the F3 and the rail line heading north to be closed, and there were grass fires in western Sydney at Blair Athol and in Campbelltown. The grass fires caused damage to garden sheds, fences and power poles but firefighters prevented any houses being damaged.
… from the NSW Fire Brigade
The North -Westerly wind also brought an enormous swarm of Bogong moths this year, on their way to the southern alps.
The infestation, as defined by much media, got great coverage because of the high-profile nesting sites they chose for the daily rest, famously forcing Parliament House employees to close their windows in an attempt to prevent them from entering the building.
At the start of October 2007 Bogong moths again invaded Sydney city. They mainly gathered in the block around the Governor Phillip Tower, especially on the building on Phillip St housing the Prime Minister’s Sydney office. They tend to gather in the corners and in niches in the sandstone buildings nearby.
from wikipedia
Yet those insects are much older resident then any of us. They have been traveling south from their winter feeding grounds, adults disperse to pastures across inland New South Wales and Queensland to lay their eggs, from longer then we can immagine.
Australian aboriginies use to know very well this migration pattern, gathering in numbers to collect and feast on them.
They are a delicious treat, with a somewhat sweet and nutty taste, rich in fat, you tried them yourself, on an outing up Mount Canobolas, in NSW central tablelands.
October also brought the flowering of the Golden Robinias (Robinia pseudocacia ‘Frisia’). This was a vogue tree in Australian gardens and landscapes during the 1980s and it is still tremendously popular today. This is also an hybridized version of much less popular parents, the Robinia pseudoacacia, and the Frisia still uses the parent plant root stock.
In the cities nature is distorted, there were no Robinias before european settlement, now lining many street-scapes and parks.
Their flowers are delicious, a bit like fresh sweet peas, or snow peas, in France Robinia flowers are served as a desert after being dipped in a light batter and deep fried… marking the start of spring.
the new ethnobotanical knowledge of a changed landscape.
Like the Marking Days, a year-long-weather-prediction system from far away lands.
June 28 2007 predicted the weather for October 07.
The day was “cloudy, with a few drops in the afternoon, over-all a bit warmer.”
October ended up to be a bit of a difficult one to define, some rain, some storm, some very hot days.
The Marking Day for November was June 29, a beautiful day, sun sun sun and rising temperatures.
Published by info on November 3rd, 2007 | Filed under Recipe, foraging, ethnobotany, marking days | Comment now »
on interviewing adam
One of the good things coming out of this online presence is that gives you the chance to connect.
Adam Fenderson came in contact with you the other week, suggesting to review some of his radio work, where he interviews various environmental practitioners.
You decided to interview him in return, a person devoted to spread an awakening towards a new environmental sensitivity, so much needed in this point in time..
Adam, could you please talk about yourself, where you come from and what drove you to commit your work to environmental activism?
I was involved in roughly the Melbourne equivalent scenes as the Sydney ones you are involved with (see SquatSpace.com n.d.r.), inc. media activism/prankster activities/warehouse space. Pretty tech focused. After 911 I got more deeply involved in peak oil research. I started energybulletin.net, a peak oil news clearinghouse, and it became quite enveloping, invigorating to help powerful ideas develop, but kind of sad and frightening too. I met David Holmgren who is now a friend, and got into his vision of permaculture.
I tried to find useful ways of dealing with my fear, so I started organising self sufficiency gatherings, and learning a few skills.
What about your foraging practice? Why did you start to look at weeds with different eyes?
My interest in weeds and foraging stems from fear, and a desire to be less dependent on the industrial food chain as I learn more about how tenuous and destructive it is.
There are other reasons too:
* when supplementing my diet with fresh greens, seeds and fruit from foraging, I am living with less money, so I can work less.
* gardening becomes less of a battle, as things like chickweed, fat hen, amaranth, purslane, dandelion, milk thistle, fennel and nettle become welcome into my garden.
A weed can be defined as ‘a plant that is not valued where it is growing’. A ‘useful weed’ is an oxymoron. There are two ways of weeding — one with your hands, the other with your mind.
* when I forage I am exploring the neglected and wild areas of the city and country, and finding value where others see none. This is a beautiful thing. I love the weedscapes of the merri creek.
* I begin to feel like I’m living in my environment, not just on top of it. When you recognise the plants around you, when you eat some of them, and return nutrients to the soil (i compost my shit too) you become integrated as a functional part of an ecosystem. There is a new level of information filling your vision as you walk around.
Seeing weeds as wild nature. This I think I all got from David. Perhaps I was tied up somewhat in the nativist assumptions that we must protect nature’s essentially pristine and static quality. because I felt some liberation when I broadened my view of nature, when I began seeing weeds as most often healing damaged landscapes. (I like that Tim Low lantana quote on your site). Now I see nature as dynamic and self-recreating, not something to be ‘protected’ by locking it up, untouched, like a museum piece. Novel and fascinating new guilds and ecosystems emerge out of indigenous and non-indigenous species (ecosynthesis). Many people hate weeds no doubt because they themselves feel like part of an invasive species. There’s guilt, and an attempt to right wrongs, but the expression of this urge is tragically counterproductive. We destroy self-healing landscapes and try to impose native-only species using military-industrial machinery and toxins. In fact, conditions have changed: pollutants now enter the system, the soil has been washed away, the climate is changing rapidly, the people that used to live in and manage the system were destroyed by genocide, and the megafauna were lost only a few millenia ago — but we think we can force nature back to an imagined and non-existent past. If instead we can see weeds as part of nature, and value their vigor and productivity, we can continue to identify with them, but change our philosophy about our potential ecological relationship with this damaged country. We are indeed like weeds, and we can heal the land too.
I’m very interested in your foraging tours too, could you please talk more about it?
where do you go? what you looking for? when? (as in do you do your foraging expeditions mainly in spring/autumn or whatever) what you find where?
I’ve only taken 3 formal weed walks so far. one along the Merri creek from Ceres in Brunswick, one in a community garden at a housing estate, and one at a backyard ‘permablitz’ (see here n.d.r.)
I haven’t prepared any notes for them, but have sometimes emailed participants a list of plants we’ve seen afterwards. They have been at different times of the year, with different species in each walk. Normally I bring reference books and hand them out. I can recognise most things we see, and people look up their medicinal uses (I can never remember much of this). There is a great out-of-print book by Gai Stern called Australian Weeds about useful weeds (there’s a link to a relatively cheap copy if you don’t have it yet) and one by Pat Collins, Useful Weeds at our Doorstep, and I also bring along with me some identification books, and herbal books. I have a North American produced urban foraging book too which has many useful garden species. Recently then I’ve found a Merri Creek re vegetation book which mentions bush tucker uses of all the natives which have been planted. I have been experimenting with some of them and getting into edible fungi this year too. Also preserving fruit from wild trees - I bottled about 50 kilos worth of apples and quinces I think!
Adam produced a couple of great interviews of David Holmegren (here) and Pat Collins (here), where he drives the topics towards the lowly plants we usually dismiss in our gardens.
Weedy thanks Adam!
Published by info on November 1st, 2007 | Filed under Other's Weeds Art, wide weeds debate, foraging | Comment now »
on not quite art
Tomorrow, Tuesday 30 October, 10 Pm, the last of a three part series will be broadcasted on ABC.
The series aims at showcasing an aspect of culture rarely sen on tv here in Australia, the “outsiders”.
Host Marcus Westbury, founder of the This is Not Art Festival in Newcastle and the former director of Next Wave Festival in Melbourne, takes on a tour of how the art world looks from the other side.
The result is commendable and although you’re partisan as both the Uncollectibles and the Weedyconnection projects are featured, you really liked the nerve of the guy.
We’re talking here of an art program who questions the reality of cultural activity within a social context using street art and unauthorized activities as examples, positioning them along side the high art which we , as viewer, are use to be presented with in mainstreams forums as the ABC TV.
“We, as viewer,” is a bit of an over-statement as the other night when you went to a friends house to watch the program, was probably the first time you laid down your eyes on the biased media tool since the world cup (a year n a half ago), and before that the period of negation of attention was just as long.
Regardless of what you think of the medium, you enjoyed the program.
I enjoyed also very much the commitment of Marcus Westbury, who diligently went in a number of forum discussions sparked by the program and answered first person the difficult questions arising from it, see here.
So, here is the link to the second episode, where the Uncollectibles and the WeedKiller project are featured.
It’s quite long, so it may be a bit heavy on low-speed internet users.
If you have problems you can alternatevily try this link, or this one from the ABC site, which i believe will not be alive for much longer, and where you will find the all series.
Published by info on October 29th, 2007 | Filed under WeedKiller, WeedyConnection, Other's Weeds Art, User Info | Comment now »
Tonight, 10pm, ABC, on weeds and reasons for arguing
The Weedyconnection project has been selected as part of a program on the ABC tonight, Not Quite Art, written and produced by Marcus Westbury.
The progarm present a number of art projects and artistic attitudes, from street art in melbourne to alternative art scenes in Newcastle, NSW, Australia, to Glasgow, Scotland.
You can read a review here and here.
I will probably upload the program on this forum in the next few weeks.
Published by info on October 23rd, 2007 | Filed under WeedyConnection, Other's Weeds Art, User Info | 2 Comments »
on permaculture, and someone who can explain it to you
To date you never touched yet the concept of Permaculture, mostly because you wouldn’t want to say the wrong things, you do not know enough about it to even attempt a broad insight.
All you can do is cut-n-paste writings on the subject, like the Wikipedia definition for the concept of “permanent agriculture”:
The word permaculture, coined by Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren during the 1970s, is a portmanteau of permanent agriculture as well as permanent culture. Through a series of publications, Mollison, Holmgren and their associates documented an approach to designing human settlements, in particular the development of perennial agricultural systems that mimic the structure and interrelationship found in natural ecologies.
Permaculture design principles extend from the position that “The only ethical decision is to take responsibility for our own existence and that of our children” (Mollison, 1990). The intent was that, by rapidly training individuals in a core set of design principles, those individuals could become designers of their own environments and able to build increasingly self-sufficient human settlements — ones that reduce society’s reliance on industrial systems of production and distribution that Mollison identified as fundamentally and systematically destroying the earth’s ecosystems.
But you are a lucky person, and sure enough in the next 3 months two budding Permaculture’s-concept-propagators are giving a series of talks in NSW, Australia, the first one being conveniently held within 5 minutes bicycle from your garden, see Milkwood Permaculture for details and bookings.
The Milkwood duo, Kirsten and Nick, will deliver the workshop, defacto actively doing something to reconnect people with land, spread the need for a sharper conscience towards nature and acknowledge the biosphere we’re part of.
I would also like to draw attention to their blog Planting Milkwood which is filling with great DIY videos and reviews published as we reading.
This guys interest you no end also because they are in the country, living a reconnection, from cities to land.
Here is one of the recent entries, where Kirsten go to an abandoned orchard to collect cuttings from an old Fig Tree:
Something you didn’t know and should be added to the Weedyconnection Database is another usefull information about willows, the leaves are used in this video for their high level of “growth hormones”.
Thanks Milkwood!
Published by info on October 22nd, 2007 | Filed under Other's Weeds Art, User Info, Remedy, wide weeds debate | Comment now »
on plants classification
Last week as part of the Philosopher’s Zone program on ABC radio, Alan Saunders interviewed Sverker Sörlin, Professor of Environmental History at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm.
The subject of the interview was Carl von Linné, better known now by his latin name Linnaeus, the Swedish naturalist who invented the modern system of botanical classification, the binomial system, where you just use the genus and the species name:
Much of philosophy is about how we divide the world up - into things, ideas, species, breeds, genera - and the people at the coal-face of this work are the naturalists. This week, we learn about the great Swedish naturalist Linnaeus, who invented the the modern system of plant classification and, in doing so, changed the world.
Learning about Linnaeus from a philosophical point of view sparks up very interesting questions of legitimacy, as in the human need to understand the world around us by simplifying and subcategorizing it all in various defined “filing systems”.
With the publication Systema Naturae, printed in the Netherlands in 1735, Linnaeus started a life-long journey of self-promotion an self-assertion as the new Adam in the Garden of Eden, giving names to all of the plants and animals of the world.
See his writings here and here.
You can download the transcript of the program here and the podcast here.
Published by info on October 16th, 2007 | Filed under Cultural diversity, history | Comment now »
Weed gathering: ethnobotanical practices in a cosmopolitan society
You gave a talk at the 2007 UTS CONFERENCE ON COSMOPOLITAN CIVIL SOCIETIES at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia.
The Conference preamble:
What does cosmopolitanism mean in an age where globalisation is accompanied by the War on Terror and where unprecedented levels of international migration are accompanied by attacks on multiculturalism and heightened ‘border security’ politics?
What futures can we imagine for cosmopolitan civil societies as community advocates and organisations struggle against defunding and the silencing of independent voices?
The UTS Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Research Centre organized and hosted the event to address themes of:
* Community activism and social movements
* Migration and civil societies
* Civil Societies and the Third Sector
* Indigenous Australians and civil society
* Cosmopolitan cities and communities
* Popular education and cosmopolitan societies
* Cultural differences and creative practices
* Cosmopolitan diversity and civil societies in developing societies
* Cross cultural dialogues
* Civil Societies and the Environment
* Challenges and opportunities facing contemporary cosmopolitan societies
A pletaphora of various topic where presented with social examples like migrant minorities in Canada or feminist struggles in South Korea and Australia.
Your talk on weeds created good discussion, some for, other against the idea of using botanical species as analogy of immigration.
What you found is that many papers presented during the 2 days conference, aknowledged the same feeling of yours.
Below are the notes for the presentation:
Weed gathering: ethnobotanical practices in a cosmopolitan society
This is not a presentation on findings rather an uncovering of questions.
This investigation-in-progress is the outcome of a personal artistic journey.According to Cotton, in Ethnobotany. Principles and Applications.
Ethnobotany is considered to encompass all studies which concern the mutual relationship between plants and traditional people.Through my creative practice I document and analyse the possibilities and restrictions faced by various ethnic groups in Australia practicing an imported and ancestral relationship with the environment.
This paper will present the WeedyConnection project, an online resource aimed at showcasing non-native plants in a new light, opening up new interactions with the Australian environment.
I have always been interested in weeds, for different reasons in different places.
I was born and grew-up in a dairy farm in northern italy, and together with the stock we also managed several acres of pastures for internal uses, corn and wheat for internal uses and external sales and poplar trees for sale to the timber industry.We had Pigs and Goats, dairy cows and meat bulls, a vegetable patch and a small orchard.
I have been aware of the concept of weed since a tender age, when my parents use to send me down the potatoe patch to descern useful species from the unwanted ones.
Back then i knew already that the concept of weed is a construct, out of invested interest.
Nature doesn’t distinguish between good or bad species, we, humans, do.
For a miriad of different reasons, but all of them centered to our, human, benefit.When i moved to australia i worked in orchards for years, then garden centres, now art centres.
I was amazed when came into contact with the agricultural australia, to learn about the legal restrains imposed on botanical species.
Here in australia there is an act of government, the Noxious Weed Act 1993, a national piece of legislation, which dictates which plants are allowed or not to live in this country.
It goes much further. The act provides for a special branch of the law, administered by the department of agriculture and primary industries which legislate each non native plant in this country and a number of natives too.
The legislation informs a special task force of law enforcers, who go around far and wide giving $200 fines on the spot to anybody found guilty of not suppressing particular species according to the guidelines dictated by the Noxious Weed Act 1993.A $200 on the spot fine to the farmer who doesnt destroy a bush of blackberry down the bottom of his paddock, $200 on the spot fine to the orchardist who doesnt make sure the willow down the creek is prevented from flowering and fruiting.
———-now————-
This is happenin in a continent were most of biodiversity is been affected irreversibily by human intervention.
David Cole the biologist says “all wilderness ecosystems would be artificial constructs, to some extent conscious reconstructions of what human thinks is natural”This is also happening in a continent where most of the environmental knowledge is lost, forever.
With the loss of aboriginal languages and cultures through two centuries of genocidal practice, we now have a social make-up in this continent that has minimal, if not nil, direct interaction with the environment.
I am not talking about farmers with cattle or sheep, or orchadist with apples, mangoes or the newly discovered olive trees. Those are a sector of our economy aimed at using the land untill there is no use anymore, see the woodchipping industry or cotton industry.
I am talking about the old person who takes the grandchildren down the creek and show the young listener how to collect, store and prepare that particular plant which will fix the sore knee.
I’m talking about an overall sentiment of belonging and placement.How many of us know how to alleviate an headhache without resorting to panadol?
The sentiment of a new awareness towards nature is echoed across several disciplines and social practices, like the ‘100 miles diet’ movement, which originated in Canada from a couple of enviromental activists, Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon
The ‘100 miles Diet’ restricts followers to provide for themselves within a specific geographical delimitation. The commercial statement has its roots in contesting the globalized economic systems which relies on fossil fuel transport (at great expense to the environment) in order to shift primary produce from one side of the globe to the other in several loops before it reaches the ultimate user.
From the 100milediet.org website “when the average North American sits down to eat, each ingredient has typically travelled at least 1,500 miles”I argue that in a cosmopolitan society, civil or not, the costant shift of cultures trasplanting and reassessing themselves in alien environments (social and botanicals) foster a disconnection to local ecosystems.
This sentiment is mirrored also in the preamble of a unveristy experimental degree offered at the University of Western Sydney hawksbury, Social Ecology.
The guiding principles, as emphasised by Murray Bookchin were unity in diversity and complexity, spontaneity, complementary and mutualistic rather than hierarchical relationships, active, participatory democracy and bioregionalism.
The funding chair of Social Ecology, Stuart B. Hill, suggests the work of various accademics and social educators like Graham Ellis-Smith.
Graham teaches programs designed to reawaken the deep connection, which he believes, exists between humanity and Nature,” we are essentially calling forward something innate in every person at a deeper level”.Sounds all very hippy and shamanistic, doesn’t it? But hey, as Jenny Monroe said about the struggles of indigenous peoples: ‘I am not ashamed in pulling in any support I can find”
In the hunter valley i found the teachings of Peter Andrews, the Natural Sequence Farming concept.
Peter Andrews, is a third generation farmer who has been involved in farming and horse breeding for 60 years. He grew up on a property near Broken Hill and spent much time with his stockman father and members of the Aboriginal community learning to read the country.
He believes that heavy grazing of streambed banks following European settlement has, mainly by reducing vegetation, significantly affected the landscape, resulting in dry spells turning into drought conditions faster than they should, bio-diversity being reduced, and in many instances fresh water being drained off, resulting in salt being released into the streambed.Peter Andrews has found that even plants labeled as weeds can serve as pioneering species in inhibiting nutrient and soil erosion. They collect and supply essential substances for environmental health. Once slashed, fertility is built up and the weeds are replaced naturally by palatable grasses. To maximize production and conservation, results require a good understanding of interaction of the roles of clays and sands in the process.
The principles of Natural Sequence Farming are complex and holistic, above all are beyond what i am presenting today.
Please visit his website at www.nsfarming.com for further information.As my argument just centres on the denial of cultural interaction.
I grew up in a country where, come spring, you get out and collect Dandelions and wild asparagus as a seasonal treat, here in australia i am denied the right to teach my daughters what a dandelion or wild asparagus looks like in the wild.
I am obliged by law to suppress and prevent them from fruiting.Let me now provide an example, Boletus, the mushroom.
Mushroom picking is a popular seasonal activity for many European cultures.
I can speak from my Italian background experience but other culture groups such as Macedonian, Russian, Ex-Yugoslavian and Polish do just as much have a well entrained connection with the activity.
There is a fantastic essay about the cultural relationship of the polish community with the Belanglo State Forest, 1 and a half hour south of Sydney.
The writer, Max Kwiatkowsky, uses the practice as an example of non-Anglo-Celtic interpretation of landscape, and how this is something quite unseen or un-acknowledged by the main stream media/culture/policy makers.
As he states in his conclusion,
“ Belanglo Pine Plantation example counters commonly held assumption of ethnic spaces being primarily an urban phenomenon.
Patently, ethnic minority groups, whether Poles, Macedonian, Vietnamese, Lebanese, Greeks or others, do get out and about just like all other Australians at least occasionally leaving the cities for recreational purposes. It’s just that the places they like to visit, and the way they view and use such places, may significantly differ from the Anglo-Celtic norm.”
Not everybody goes bush camping, barbecue-fishing-rod-and-boat-ramp style.
In a exponentialy cosmopolitan society like Australia different kind of culturally-driven interaction with the environment should be fostered, as rightful symbiosis.
With all of this research in mind i present my artistic argument.
In the past years I set-up audio and self-guided tours of various environments, as part of sculpture shows or residenciesThe tours guide participants through a number of display panels highlighting some plants commonly known as weeds.
I employ botanical species to metaphorically dispute the understanding of multiculturalism within the context of the Australian population, the plurality of cultures and genetic background and stories. Within a socio-ecological argument I acknowledge the various differences of costumes/customs which exists in our culturally diverse environment and highlight the traditional connections with introduced species.The framing of “illegal” and unwanted flora within a spectacle context draws attention to the concept of “permissible species” as a social construct. Weeds are defined by a nation’s laws, and what is declared a weed in one place may be a precious resource in another. There is a significant metaphorical connection between this definition of “weed” and the arbitrary restriction imposed on human migration by national governments.
—————————————————————————————————————-Cosmopiltan civil society acknowledges the interconnectness of all life forms, yet political restrictions affect not only the human side of the equation.
As oppose to Natural Law, which is based on what is assumed to be the permanent characteristics of human nature, as understood in ethical philosophy, theology, law and social theory,Civil society is seen as the enactment of Positive Law,
I am not very good with binarious contrasts but i would argue the concept of civil societies should embrace also an awareness of bioregionalism, acknoledging our very neighbourhood as an ecosystem.In terms of cosmopolitanism then, attentive considering should be given to the multifaceted reality of personal and group interaction with the ecosystem.
If civil societies are understood as conglomerates of civic organizations and institutions then i argue it should also acknowledge the environment in the equation.
We live in a biosphere, before a society.
Published by info on October 9th, 2007 | Filed under WeedyConnection, Other's Weeds Art, wide weeds debate, Cultural diversity, ethnobotany | Comment now »
on october’s wheater or, on birthdays and kangaroos diets
This is the monthly post on the Marking Days, a year-long-weather-prediction system from far away lands.
June 28 2007 predicted the weather for October 07.
The day was “cloudy, with a few drops in the afternoon, over-all a bit warmer.”
So will be October in Sydney?
The predictions for this past September were for a cold and windy one.
What we got was a bit of everything, cold at times, rainy then windy then warm days.
This information-gathering project was done with no serious attempt at recording meteorological data, just informal observations.
That said, one thing went by which needed more consideration.
Is by now well over this blog first birthday, September 25, which you wanted to mark by re-posting a selection of past articles.. you can still do it, didn’t happen yet though.
Also you were down the south coast of nsw a couple of weeks ago, were the cabins in the national park were the feeding ground of kangaroos, rosella, kookabarras and tiny crabs.
Interseting how the roos allowed themselves 2pm feedings on the lawn of the cabin park, the grass was kikuyu, from tropical east Africa.
This crepuscular feeders (i.e. feed at dusk and dawn) are so accustomed to humans they thrive on well kept pastures.
Published by info on October 2nd, 2007 | Filed under wide weeds debate, marking days | Comment now »
on talking about it
There is a conference coming up at the University of Technology, Sydney, and you will preesent a paper about this weedyconnection project.
UTS CONFERENCE ON COSMOPOLITAN CIVIL SOCIETIES 4 + 5 OCT
What does cosmopolitanism mean in an age where globalisation is accompanied by the War on Terror and where unprecedented levels of international migration are accompanied by attacks on multiculturalism and heightened ‘border security’ politics?
What futures can we imagine for cosmopolitan civil societies as community advocates and organisations struggle against defunding and the silencing of independent voices?
It cost stacks of $$$ to see it.
You wonder how many readers could afford it.
You will anyway paste the paper here in next few days.
Below is the abstract for the presentation.
Weed gathering: ethnobotanical practices in a cosmopolitan society.
Ethnobotany studies the complex relationships between plants and
cultures.
The focus of ethnobotany is on how plants have been or are used,
managed and perceived in human societies.Through my art practice I analyze and document the possibilities and
restrictions facing various ethnic groups in Australia practicing an,
at times, ancestral relationship with illicit non-indigenous plant
species (weeds).This paper will present my “WeedyConnection” project, an online
resource aiming at examining non-native plants, and re-considering their
usefulness to contemporary culture in Australia.I consider interactions between various ethnic groups in Australia and
transplanted botanical species in the local environment: the Polish
practice of mushroom collecting in the Belango State Forest; legal
restrictions on growing bamboo in Sydney; and personal accounts of
“illegal” foraging for dandelion.Weeds are defined by a nation’s laws, and what is declared a weed in
one place may be a precious resource in another. My framing of “illegal”
and unwanted flora draws attention to the concept of “permissible
species” as a social construct. There is a significant metaphorical
connection between this definition of “weed” and the increasing restrictions
imposed on human migration by national governments.Such a reconsideration of weeds and their uses may assist in expanding
our understanding of contemporary cosmopolitanism.
Also, it was spring equinox the other day..
Published by info on September 26th, 2007 | Filed under User Info, wide weeds debate, Cultural diversity, ethnobotany | Comment now »
on lantana’s new nature
The book by Tim Low, New Nature, is like a block of chocolate, you could eat it in one mouthful, but it taste better if you savour it.
You found this couple of pages which are so pertinent to your argument you will have to duplicate them in electronic format.
Thanks Tim.
Chapter 7
Nature needs weeds‘these weeds are now part of a “new” Australian ecology’
-Greg Czechura, Queensland MuseumGenetic engineering is very much older than it seems. In nineteen century Europe a vegetable Frankenstein was created in hothouses by hybridizing various Latin American shrubs. The monster so spawned, lantana (Lantana camara), went on to become one of world’s worst weeds. This rampant, poisonous shrub is an ‘aggregate’ entity, a hybrid with DNA from several plants.
Lantana in Australia goes back a long way, Merino breeder john Macarthur grew it at Camden (NSW n.d.r.) in 1843, and twenty years later it was running amok around Sydney and Brisbane. Up and down the humid coast it stole the newly cleared holdings of pioneers. Around Sydney it formed ‘dense thickets which render the shores almost unapproachable’, complained naturalist Reverend Tenison-Woods in 1881. So entrenched is this invented plant in the mind of ecologists today that no-one can really imagine what Australia looked like pre-lantana. it now covers 4 million hectares and poison to death 1500 cows each year. It takes over from other plants, included endangered native jute (Corchorus cunning-hamii), and rates as one of Australia twenty worst weeds.
Biological control hasn’t worked well against lantana, partly because is not an authentic specie. Over the years more than 30 insects have been trailed, beginning with four species back in 1914. The insects can never match lantana perfectly because they feed on one or other of its parent species, such as Lantana urticifolia, not on lantana itself. There is no Lantana camara in Latin America to collects bugs from, and no bugs that have evolved to eat this hothouse product.
Although biocontrol boffins want lantana defeated, success may be Pyrrhic. It’s a perverse fact that Australian native animals now rely on this horticultural invention. On over cleared farms leafy lantana tangles in gullies furnish much-needed cover for wallabies, bandiccots, fairy wrens, reptiles, and almost everything else. The prickly walls it throws around small bushland remnants keep out trail bikes and dogs. Made to flower continuously and generously, its nectar sates honeyeaters and butterflies, including rare birdwings. Its tiny fruits fruits feed possums, silvereyes, bowerbirds and rosella, and reed bees nest in the stems.
Very few native plants furnish food and shelter for so many. Thirty-two birds species use lantana in north Queensland alone. Like the river red gum, it has become a keystone specie for wildlife. No other weed so ingratiates itself with animals. If lantana disappeared overnight most whipbirds would be homeless and many wallabies would die from dogs attacks. Butterfly numbers would plummet. One bird, the vulnerable black0brested button-quail, might even become extinct. This Queensland bird has lost most of its dry rainforest habitat to farmland, and lantana is now a major refuge.
For such reasons, most biologists grudgingly accept lantana.
‘It’s become part of the Australian flora to the extent that no other weed has. It’s now part of the whole successional; process of rainforest, providing a useful role as soil controller’, said Mike Olsen (when raiforest is cleared it’s the first plant to clothe the bare earth, before the rainforest returns). A naturalist I spoke to was blunter: “We should just accept lantana as a native plant and forger all about it.” Lantana is the weed our wildlife needs. It puts shelter back onto land that farmers would rather keep clean.