Just been reading some government websites detailing how BAD willows are. Cause erosion, kill wildlife, water usage etc. Funny thing, a few months ago there was a show on the TV about them being used in europe for riparian revegatation. Perhaps some of you experts could tell me, do we have different water here in Australia to the rest of the world? In their native environments are they considered 'weeds' and exterminated?
Merry Christmas
Col.
Salix
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Col
Our rivers and streams are now highly incised. Water is rushing either out to sea or into open storage dams.
These waterways are the arteries of our landscape. If it was our body, you would put a suture on it to stop the patient from dying.
Our landscape is 'bleeding' to death.
Willows are the sutures which can help prevent the landscape from dying by stopping and slowing the flow of water away from our landscape.
The people removing the willows have a vested interest in finishing the patient once and for all......they are paid hundreds of millions of $$$ to remove what is known the world over as a PRIME riparian plant.
The patient and the landscape will ultimately 'bleed' to death!!!
Our rivers and streams are now highly incised. Water is rushing either out to sea or into open storage dams.
These waterways are the arteries of our landscape. If it was our body, you would put a suture on it to stop the patient from dying.
Our landscape is 'bleeding' to death.
Willows are the sutures which can help prevent the landscape from dying by stopping and slowing the flow of water away from our landscape.
The people removing the willows have a vested interest in finishing the patient once and for all......they are paid hundreds of millions of $$$ to remove what is known the world over as a PRIME riparian plant.
The patient and the landscape will ultimately 'bleed' to death!!!
Duane
A good use for willows. Take a piece of Salix alba var caerulia, fashion it into a cricket bat. I know it will be a bit light for what we want to do. Take said bat to Canberra and beat pollies severely over the head!!
I saw a documentary on the TV, I think it was based in Switzerland, they were doing some riparian repair of a stream that had been a rock lined channel. They removed the rocks from the bank and let it go back to a 'natural' flow, complete with meanders, or as I guess we would call them, billabongs. They replanted the banks with all sorts of plants including WILLOWS which they said were good for wildlife habitat. So what is so different about our streams in Oz? Sounds a bit like all those scientists living off the 'global warming' scare?
Regards
Col.
A good use for willows. Take a piece of Salix alba var caerulia, fashion it into a cricket bat. I know it will be a bit light for what we want to do. Take said bat to Canberra and beat pollies severely over the head!!
I saw a documentary on the TV, I think it was based in Switzerland, they were doing some riparian repair of a stream that had been a rock lined channel. They removed the rocks from the bank and let it go back to a 'natural' flow, complete with meanders, or as I guess we would call them, billabongs. They replanted the banks with all sorts of plants including WILLOWS which they said were good for wildlife habitat. So what is so different about our streams in Oz? Sounds a bit like all those scientists living off the 'global warming' scare?
Regards
Col.
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RK & JS PRYCE
- Posts: 2
- Joined: Fri Dec 26, 2008 2:29 pm
- Location: Eastern Dorrigo
Dear R&J
My own personal experience with Salix is having three mature trees in a 1/4 acre backyard in Melbourne. I guess what we have to do is the old thing about telling the difference between an orange and a lemon? ...Suck it and see! If I am right in my readings of Peter's books its that willows slow down and trap silt, plus add their own fallen leaves and when you have minor floods you get the same situation as the Egyptians have when the Nile floods, a spreading of fertility over the land.
As for something beneficial, I have just read two of Prince Charles' books about the gardens at Highgrove. In them he talks about pollarding the willows and using the prunings for basketmaking and plant stakes. Who knows, a bit of value adding for some struggling farmers perhaps?
Cheers
Col.
My own personal experience with Salix is having three mature trees in a 1/4 acre backyard in Melbourne. I guess what we have to do is the old thing about telling the difference between an orange and a lemon? ...Suck it and see! If I am right in my readings of Peter's books its that willows slow down and trap silt, plus add their own fallen leaves and when you have minor floods you get the same situation as the Egyptians have when the Nile floods, a spreading of fertility over the land.
As for something beneficial, I have just read two of Prince Charles' books about the gardens at Highgrove. In them he talks about pollarding the willows and using the prunings for basketmaking and plant stakes. Who knows, a bit of value adding for some struggling farmers perhaps?
Cheers
Col.
Where to start??
In Nature, all plants evolved to 'fit' a role or put another way to 'fill' a nitch.
We have in plant communities what are known as primary colonisers. These are plants that are the Mounties of the plant world....they come to the rescue of degraded or eroded landscapes.
In the case of the willow it is one of these primary colonisers. It is a wound healer. It will always invade an area that's in need....that is its biological function.
After the primary colonisers have restored some stability to in this case, an eroded stream bank, the secondary colonisers come along. These are usually the N fixers. She oaks, casurinas, are one of these.
In Nature they act/work in sequence. Once the secondary colonisers have performed their role most of the original primary colonisers will die. They no longer have a role...the stream bed is reaching some kind of stability and equilibrium.
Following the secondary colonisers comes the tertiary colonisers and finallly in a balanced system a climax of vegetation is built up consisting of great bidiversity.....this is the natural way of most plant communities.
As we have removed 95% of our biodiversity that was present when europeans arrived many/most of our native primary colonisers are gone.
But there are some:
Melia azedarch
Pittosporum undulatum,
to name two. But the plant nazis see these native species as being invasive and therefore they are declared weeds in some areas.
I suggest you try these if you are on the east coast.
In Nature, all plants evolved to 'fit' a role or put another way to 'fill' a nitch.
We have in plant communities what are known as primary colonisers. These are plants that are the Mounties of the plant world....they come to the rescue of degraded or eroded landscapes.
In the case of the willow it is one of these primary colonisers. It is a wound healer. It will always invade an area that's in need....that is its biological function.
After the primary colonisers have restored some stability to in this case, an eroded stream bank, the secondary colonisers come along. These are usually the N fixers. She oaks, casurinas, are one of these.
In Nature they act/work in sequence. Once the secondary colonisers have performed their role most of the original primary colonisers will die. They no longer have a role...the stream bed is reaching some kind of stability and equilibrium.
Following the secondary colonisers comes the tertiary colonisers and finallly in a balanced system a climax of vegetation is built up consisting of great bidiversity.....this is the natural way of most plant communities.
As we have removed 95% of our biodiversity that was present when europeans arrived many/most of our native primary colonisers are gone.
But there are some:
Melia azedarch
Pittosporum undulatum,
to name two. But the plant nazis see these native species as being invasive and therefore they are declared weeds in some areas.
I suggest you try these if you are on the east coast.
-
RK & JS PRYCE
- Posts: 2
- Joined: Fri Dec 26, 2008 2:29 pm
- Location: Eastern Dorrigo