Thread: Australian Pine?

Originally Posted by Yanis

Some wise guy thought it would be a good idea to plant these around our property. We have an acreage south of Adelaide. It actually proved to be a pest and spreads like wild fire. We have probably have about five stands at various places and it is annoying to say the least in Adelaide climate.

What are 'these', Yanis? I've not heard of Casuarinas being a pest in Aus. & I'm wondering if you're confusing "Athel pine" (Tamarix aphylla) with Casuarinas? They look similar, superficially, but Athel pine is an introduced species & a declared pest in most states, for sure.....

Cheers,

Originally Posted by IanW

What are 'these', Yanis? I've not heard of Casuarinas being a pest in Aus. & I'm wondering if you're confusing "Athel pine" (Tamarix aphylla) with Casuarinas? They look similar, superficially, but Athel pine is an introduced species & a declared pest in most states, for sure.....

Cheers,

Definitely not the Athel. These have the same structure leaves and seed pods as the Casurina from what I can see. They send out surface roots up to several meters and shoot new trees from the roots. Someone planted one next to the garden and now it sends up shoots well into the garden. The stand next to the garden is now about 3 or four meters square. The wife went to some Ag day and came home with a leaflet saying that they were a pest. I don't have it handy but they looked a lot like these but they may have been something else. I did not really follow through at the time.

There are tracks through the property and if I leave it for a few months these trees spring up along the tracks where they pass through these trees.

Originally Posted by IanW

Only just, Luke.

Botanically speaking, I think you would be safe in saying the Pine family is pretty much a northern hemisphere group.

However, there is a goodly number of gymnosperms south of the equator, including lots of 'primitive' types, some of which you mentioned. In fact, there is far more biological variety down this side than on your side of the equator - we are coming to realise that Gondwana was the source of much of the current (land) plant & animal life on the planet..

People use the term 'pine' very loosely. Strictly speaking, Pines are a genus within the family pinaceae, which includes (true) cedars, firs, hemlocks, larches, pines and spruces. These are all essentially northern hemisphere trees. The closest we have to the pines are members of the cupressaceae, another very large family, and also mostly northern hemisphere, but this is where our "Cypress" (Callitris spp) belongs, so for once, the common name is pretty close. What are called 'cedars' (they aren't botanically) in North America (Thuja spp), and Redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) also belong in this group.

It can all be very confusing, and even more confusion has been added to the mix by inappropriate application of common names. "Cypress pine" is something of an oxymoron, and calling Toona (a hardwood in the same family as Mahogany) "cedar" ???????

Cheers,

Yep that'll do.

Originally Posted by Yanis

Definitely not the Athel. These have the same structure leaves and seed pods as the Casurina from what I can see....

OK, sorry for doubting you, Yanis - I was far too hasty with my suggestion! Should've done what I did just now & looked it up . Of course you're dead right - the PIRSA site has a blurb on Casuarina glauca. They need to update their site - the genus name was changed to Allocasuarina about 15 years or more ago. Anyway, semantics aside, it sounds exactly like what you describe, with the suckering & all.

I guess it just corroborates the old saying that a weed is a plant in the wrong place. As I said above, hundreds of acres of A. glauca have been planted around the Brisbane airport where the saline swampy conditions suit them perfectly. They are thriving, or at least most are. About a hundred acres of them were bulldozed for the new runway, a couple of years ago. I drove past 5K long windrows of them about 30 times and would love to have gotten in there with a chainsaw; some trees would've been up to 400mm diameter at the base. But knowing what a bureaucratic nightmare it would've been to get permission to do so, I didn't even bother to ask. They've since been returned to CO2, which is a pity, I could have had chair legs & spindles to keep me going until well past my use-by date.
Cheers,

Yanis, The main reason that Casuarinas and Allocasuarinas sucker is that the roots have been subject to some form of mechanical damage e.g cut with a lawn mower. the other thing with casuarinas and allocasuarinas is that they change the environment to suit their offspring which can make it difficult to grow ground covers underneath them. If you want any more advice I way beable to assist you as I have been doing them a bit at TAFE recently.

Originally Posted by Wood Collector

Yanis, The main reason that Casuarinas and Allocasuarinas sucker is that the roots have been subject to some form of mechanical damage e.g cut with a lawn mower. the other thing with casuarinas and allocasuarinas is that they change the environment to suit their offspring which can make it difficult to grow ground covers underneath them. If you want any more advice I way beable to assist you as I have been doing them a bit at TAFE recently.

Thanks for that. The two people previously were renters and both were greenies (noting wrong with that of course) but the last guy was somewhat of an extremist and did some things which were not terribly constructive and planting lots of these was not one of the best ideas he had. The property has some really nice trees and shrubs, but as you indicated nothing can complete with these things in the environment we have here. There were some other compounding factors as well.

Fortunately they are all pretty young but they are well established already in some places.

john

Originally Posted by Yanis

....Fortunately they are all pretty young but they are well established already in some places......

John, up here we've got a few botanical rabbits, too, like Celtis & Tipuana, and one native that's way out of its range (Corymbia torelliana). My backyard was full of these 3, plus Lantana and a few other weeds, when we moved in 11 years ago. I prefer to use "biological" control when I can (grub the damn things out with a mattock), but the bigger stuff got the chainsaw treatment, followed by a goodly dose of glyphosate poured into holes drilled around the sapwood. If you don't resort to chemical warfare, these species just sucker or sprout from the stump, and before you know it, you've got even more problems.

I've still got a couple of Celtis trees and a radiata Pine to come out, but they are all in very awkward positions, and I keep putting off dealing with them. But the problem isn't going away - in fact it's growing.....

Cheers,