Mother Bear's arrived!

[SteveyC]

Originally Posted by selchie

Nature in balance and all that. And try not to live next to a stockyard. Or a garbage landfill. Or Stevey's gym socks

Hehe every time I'm a way for a few days I come back to insults hehe. Where did pick up that rep from Selchie you sour'un you.

[selchie]

Not every time, Stevey. Just most of the time . I love to hear you squawk, that's all. The sourness must be from all the pickles I eat.

[MotherBear]

After nearly 3 weeks here, I can't say we've been too troubled by nasties. We've come across quite a few whitetails and the main problem | have with them is in identifying them. I usually have to call Taffy to do that, otherwise it's a case of kill first and ask questions later. I've had one bite, which could have been from a mosquito, but otherwise I can't complain. The mossies certainly aren't as prolific as at home in Oman, so that's good.

[moggy]

Originally Posted by jamesthecarman

I asked my Kiwi flatmate, and he confirmed they are in fact "Agapanthus".

Good going Selchie!

Yes and they are on NZ list of plants to be got rid of as they are an invasive weed
~~ WEEDBUSTERS | Weed Information | Search result detail ~~

[MotherBear]

Originally Posted by moggy

Yes and they are on NZ list of plants to be got rid of as they are an invasive weed

As are gorse and pampas grass. We saw areas of such plants, which had been deliberately killed off.

[moggy]

Yes gorse is a real problem. They have had to introduce gorse thrips in an attempt to get rid of it.

I would love to know whose bright idea it was to bring gorse to the other side of the world was. It has no use in this country as it is!

If you follow some of the links on the site I mentioned it lists all the other weeds that they are trying to erradicate, there are some surprises on the list.

[selchie]

From what I heard, gorse was brought over to serve as pasture hedging for the sheep. They didn't think it would spread so well, but... I hope those thrips work well, and don't turn on the native plants.

[moggy]

Not disputing with you, but I find that odd that someone would do that, we don't use gorse as hedging in the UK.

One thing I found odd driving round the SI, was when they cleared the land they just piled the stones up in a corner of the field rather than building dry stone walls with them.

[selchie]

You are quite possibly right, Moggy. My only other experience with gorse was wading through it in Cornwall, going to a stone circle. Pesty, nasty stuff. Maybe some seeds just rode in on the woolies.

[moggy]

I had heard the story that it was brought in for hedging as well, however, certainly on the South Island, I couldn't see any being used for hedging. Maybe it had been in the past, but has since been removed when farmers realised how prolific it was.

Yes it is pretty nasty stuff if you ever have the misfortune to have to walk through it.

May be we should see if we can find a definitive answer on how/why it ended up in NZ, and how come it took so long before they started trying to erradicate it.