Manual control of Pampas in the forest margins

Thanks to @chrise (a co-author) for the link to this 1985 Forest Research Institute publication about pampas and toetoe:
https://cdm20044.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p20044coll6/id/155

It will be confusing for some newer naturalists to see toetoe referred to as Cortaderia though! I only discovered the new name, or classification, a year ago on joining iNat, and already I was momentarilly perturbed to see the name "Cortaderia" applied to a native!

Having no formal education in ecology, I was most interested to see pampas described as a forest weed, as I have been removing small plants from this margin of dry kauri ridge regen forest underpines, tanekaha and other podocarps and understorey.

Not surprisingly, the clumps were larger and more numerous in the outer margin of solely manuka. I had been wondering, for a year, if this is an infestation on the way out as shade increases, or a growing invasion. I assumed it would get suppressed if dense shade increases fast enough, and removing or suppressing the pampas gives the forest time to develop the necessary dense shade. I have little experience of forest except urban Auckland.

Anyway, I am glad to confirm it has been easy to trample and later uproot all plants found under canopy whether inlight or heavy shade, and to suppress the large ones in the sunny margin by breaking down the culms and tall shoots and throwing the foliage over the clump, with a single summer follow-up intervention resulting of rotting of the whole plant gradually. I was told this is 1997 by a contractor. I can't remember if he used herbicide as well, but it doesn't seem to be necessary. Our single 6mH-3mW clump in full sun is now c.50cmH and mostly dead. It has live shoots remaining over about 1m x .5m, because we chose to allow growth to resume on one side, beside a public walkway, during the months of the summer drought.

I learnt from the pamphlet linked above that some native species have erect flowerheads, which is important as I had recently been told that erect flowerheads indicated pampas as a blanket rule.

Publicado el viernes, 02 de agosto de 2019 a las 09:29 PM por kaipatiki_naturewatch kaipatiki_naturewatch

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