A HITCH HIKER

While we were collecting last year’s corflute covers and drainage discs down in last year’s Big Gully planting, we found the young trees mostly well grown, a few bowled over by wombats, a few being chewed on by insects – those I’m hoping will provide food and attract birds in the future.

The thistles were fiendish, so even though the trees are growing well, most of them are still overtopped by the blues and saffrons, and so were we.

There were also some bright yellow daisies, growing out of a cover with a Prickly Moses plant I bought (not from my usual suppliers). The plants were large and healthy and gave plenty of good stabs, which is just what we want to protect small birds. The daisy was also healthy.

I stared at it suspiciously. The innocent yellow daisies looked like Fireweed, one of the weeds we (so far) don’t have. It could also be a lovely native asteracae in the same senecio genus. For someone with limited botany skills like me, the identification was a bit tricky.

I hadn’t installed the NSW Weedwise app on my new phone, and the other identification apps I did have required web access. I took off up the hill to get the internet connection not available down in the gully. Then, tried posting pictures to an identification group. The results were mixed, but in the end, I was pretty sure I had a hitch-hiking fireweed, as there were more petals than the native version.

I came back a few days later with a garbage bag and removed it. I’ll have to come back later in the year to see if it dropped any seed.

With a bit of luck they won’t do as well here as they do on the coast, where they’re a major weed.

Hope not.

Hope my identification was right.