The motto of the Euroa Arboretum is ‘Growing back the bush’. To that end the Arb has been dedicated to restoring landscapes, particularly grassy woodlands on the Arb site in Euroa as well as on public and private land in the Strathbogie Ranges and Longwood Plains areas. What goes hand in hand with ‘bringing back the bush’ is removing exotic (non-native) plants from the landscape. In grassy woodland environments in particular, number one on the hit list of plants to remove are introduced perennial grasses and weeds.
A common way to do this is to use chemicals to poison the plants before they seed. However many of these grasses have built a ‘seed bank’ in the soil. Rather than die off once poisoned, these seeds will sprout for many years. The process of removing perennial grasses and managing grasslands by using fire has gained prominence recently. A fire of the right intensity at the right time can be a useful tool for killing off these grasses and weeds before they seed and can also effectively ‘sterilise’ the seeds that have built up in the soil.
The Arb has used fire to control Annual Veldt Grass (Ehrharta erecta). This plant is an aggressive perennial grass which spreads rapidly excluding many native groundcovers from growing. In conjunction with Phil Hawkey (CFA) and the local Euroa fire brigade an area of Veldt Grass at the Arb was treated with a hot burn in the spring of 2013. In the photograph above the area on the right (where all the exotic grasses are happily growing) has been sprayed for the last five years so as to prevent seed formation…and there is still a healthy grass cover. The area to the left was burned in 2013 and spot sprayed for exotic grasses in 2014. The difference is marked.
Fire also has its place in native vegetation landscapes. As well as removing dead growth from tussock-type plants, and creating bare space between them in which other plants can grow, some native seeds need the intense heat from fire to help them germinate.
At the Arb we will continue to experiment using fire as a tool for removing weeds and also to stimulate native plant regeneration.