Tuart and Weed Guide

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Tuart and Weed Guide

• Tuart Survey Training
• Friends of Trigg Bushland Inc
• www.triggbushland.org.au

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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.

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

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

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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.
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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.
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Asparagus asparagoides (bridal creeper) is a
southern African plant and is one of the WAs
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
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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.

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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
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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.

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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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the end

• Tuart Survey Training
• Friends of Trigg Bushland Inc
• www.triggbushland.org.au