Win for the Warriors – Caring for our Coast

Glory lily experiments have produced a win for Hat Head Dune Care on the NSW mid north coast.
The volunteer group has found a way to control this weed without damaging surrounding native vegetation, and their method is now being used in nearby Hat Head National Park.

This achievement owes much to the funding provided by the NRCMA for their Weed Warriors of Hat Head project. The $17,530 is part of Caring for our Coast, a program sponsored by the Australian Government’s Caring for our Country.

Funding for the project means the group can continue weed control and regeneration work in the coastal sand dunes, paperbark forest and littoral rainforest behind Hat Head village.
Glory lily is a “garden escapee” weed that has proliferated on the dunes since bitou was removed. In the past year, nearly half of all weed plants collected by the group were glory lily (49,734 plants). Declaring war on this weed, the volunteers set up two-year trial plots on the dunes in October 2009. They tried many techniques: drizzling with herbicides, spraying with herbicides, hand pulling, digging out, and a spray of salt, vinegar and oil.

They marked out nine plots about 2m by 2m, one for each of eight different treatments and one control plot receiving “no treatment”. Each method was applied in October and again in March. Weed plants and native plants in the plots were counted at the start, then five more times. When results were compared, one method had emerged as the most promising, just in time for the new outbreak of glory lily in the national park.

The best results came from a drizzle technique using herbicide mixture of equal parts of glyphosate, vegetable oil and a penetrant, plus dye. Drops of the thick mixture were applied by hand from a small bottle into the growing tip of the weed, without coming into contact with other plants.  Although painstaking, this technique killed glory lily foliage within a day, and may also kill the underground tuber because it sticks and penetrates.
Encouraged by this outcome, the volunteers are continuing with their experiments for at least another year. They believe that morning glory seed is viable for two years, and there may be other variables to consider, such as rainfall.

The Weed Warriors of Hat Head project is tackling 16ha of bitou and lantana, as well as other environmental weeds that degrade native vegetation. Chinese violet, a Class 1 weed, is threatening the 2ha of Littoral Rainforest, so the volunteers are helping Kempsey Shire Council to manage it.

They are also helping to conserve biodiversity by rehabilitating and protecting bushland wildlife corridors. Weed Warriors project work is based on a management plan that was completed with 2008 Caring for our Country funds secured by Hat Head Dune Care.
Submitted by Julie Ho, NRCMA