Tuart and Weed Guide

1. Tuart and Weed Guide Tuart Survey Training Friends of Trigg Bushland Inc www.triggbushland.org.au

2. What is a tuart? • You are likely to see mostly tuart trees. • The only other trees you are likely to see are marri, although there are occasional jarrah trees.

3. This handout will be available for use during tuart mapping.

4. Tuart trees have long, narrow leaves if mature and short leaves if juvenile. The underside is nearly the same colour as the top. Fruit may be hard to see in the canopy, but will be small. The trunk of mature trees is usually grey.

5. Marri trees have large, obvious fruit (honky nuts) that are usually visible in the canopy. The leaves often have reddish stems, and the underside of the leaf is usually lighter than the top of the leaf.

6. Some Weeds of Trigg Bushland • Weeds appear different depending on time of year • Photos and text from Western Weeds, A Guide to the Weeds of Western Australia, by Hussey, Keighery, Cousens, Dodd & Lloyd (1997) http://members.iinet.net.au/~weeds/index.htm

7. Weeds to identify: • Pelargonium • Carnation Weed • Bridal creeper • Freesia • Fumitory • Onion Weed • Oxalis • Veldt grass • Wild oats • Couch • Other

8. Pelargonium The genus Pelargonium includes all garden 'geraniums' and several garden varieties. Pelargonium capitatum (rose pelargonium) is a straggling shrubby perennial, softly hairy, with compact heads of pink flowers.

9. Geraldton Carnation Weed Euphorbia terracina (Geraldton carnation weed) is a smooth leaved erect perennial to 80cm tall, much branched from the base. The leaves are long and narrow, 1-4cm long and minutely toothed. The flower is at the top of the stalk, yellow-green, and produced in summer. Produces a very toxic and irritating milky sap when cut.

10. Asparagus asparagoides (bridal creeper) is a southern African plant and is one of the WA’s most urgent environmental weed problems. Birds relish its fleshy fruits and spread the seeds in their droppings. It is extremely invasive, spreading even into undisturbed bushland. It flowers in spring, dies down in summer, then shoots rapidly to climb and sprawl over other vegetation, eventually smothering it. Bridal creeper is a very serious weed, especially in coastal dune ecosystems. CODE: BRIDAL

11. Freesia • Freesia alba x leichtlinii (freesia) This popular garden flower with an attractive scent has become a serious weed of urban bushland. The flower stems have a characteristic right-angled bend just below the lowest flower. It flowers in spring and is a hybrid of two species.

12. F. capreolata (white fumitory, climbing fumitory) has creamy white flowers; the tips of the petals are a dark, blackish red and its leaves are bright green. It sprawls and climbs, its stems sometimes reaching 1m in length. On the Swan Coastal Plain it is common on wasteland, road verges and shrublands, and flowers mainly in winter and spring. CODE: FUM

13. Onionweed • Trachyandra divaricata (strapweed, dune onion weed) has flat leaves and the flowering stalk is repeatedly and widely branched. It flowers in spring and the white petals often have a pair of yellow spots near their base.

14. Oxalis spp. A family of perennial herbs that regrow annually from tubers. Leaves usually of three heart-shaped leaflets. Western Australia has 14 species of which 12 are naturalised. O. pes-caprae (soursob, sour grass) is a common weed with stalked leaves and many yellow flowers. O. purpurea(four o'clock, purple wood sorrel) usually with prostrate leaves in a small rosette. Flowers appear from late autumn to spring, usually rose-purple with a yellow throat. CODE: OXALIS

15. E. calycina(perennial veldt grass) is a tufted perennial to 80cm tall. The inflorescence is a drooping erect panicle of reddish-purple flowers. Flowers in spring. It is a widespread weed of roadsides and bushland on sandy soils the Swan Coastal Plain.  E. longiflora (annual veldt grass) is a tufted annual to 30cm tall. The greenish-purple inflorescence is a narrow panicle, to 15cm long, flowering in spring. It is a widespread weed of offshore islands, coastal dunes and sandy soils. CODE: VELDT

16. A. barbata (wild oat) is a tufted annual herb to 1.5m tall. The inflorescence is a drooping, usually one-sided panicle. CODE: OAT

17. Cynodon dactylon (couch) is a stoloniferous and rhizomatous prostrate perennial, to several metres across, rooting at the nodes. The leaves are bluish-green. The inflorescence of two to seven digitate, purplish spikes of flowers is produced in late spring and summer. It is widely planted as a lawn grass and it invades wetlands and river edges in southern Western Australia. It is native to the Kimberley and the tropics worldwide. CODE: COUCH

18. Erodium Erodium cicutarium (common storksbill) When green, the fruits form a long beak shape like the head of a stork or heron, that split when ripe so that each seed is attached to a long, spirally-twisted awn. As these 'corkscrews' twist and relax with changing humidity, they drive the seed into the ground

19. Cape Tulip • Moraea flaccida (one leaf cape tulip) Prior to flowering in spring, infestations can be recognised at a distance from the brown tinge resulting from the dying tips of their leaves. Petals up to 4cm long.

20. Pink Gladiolus • Gladiolus caryophyllaceus (pink gladiolus) is spring-flowering and visually attractive. Its leaves have a distinctive red margin and, in young plants, are twisted spirally in an anti-clockwise direction

21. Blue Lupin • Lupinus cosentinii (Western Australian blue lupin) has blue flowers in whorls on a long main stalk, and 7 to 13 leaflets, up to 1.5cm wide.

22. Flaxleaf fleabane • Conyza bonariensis (flaxleaf fleabane) is a grey-hairy plant, usually not much more than a metre tall, best distinguished by its stem which branches below each pyramid of inflorescences, resulting in a candelabra shape.

23. Sea Spinach • Tetragonia decumbens (sea spinach) is a prostrate or scrambling soft, semi-succulent perennial, to 5m across, with small, four-lobed yellow flowers with numerous stamens and dry brown winged fruits. Flowers in spring.

24. Capeweed • Arctotheca calendula (capeweed) is an abundant plant, found throughout the south-west, and increasing rapidly in the arid zone where it is displacing everlastings. It is a rosette-forming annual, with greyish, lobed leaves, and heads up to 6cm across, produced in spring. They have brilliant yellow ray florets and a centre of black disc florets.

25. Guildford Grass • Romulea rosea (Guildford grass, onion grass) The flowers, with petals up to 1.8cm in length, open first at ground level. As they mature, the flower stem elongates and bends over, eventually pushing the seed capsule back under the surrounding vegetation.

26. the end Tuart Survey Training Friends of Trigg Bushland Inc www.triggbushland.org.au