You can help South West Rocks Community Dune Care without even leaving home.
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It’s that time of year again when the showy yellow flowers of Cassia (Senna Pendula) are obvious in gardens, roadsides and bushland around South West Rocks.
Pretty as it can be with its yellow flowers and drooping bean-like seed pods, this weed is a real pest in the bush as it spreads quickly into thickets, which crowd out seedlings of local native trees like banksias, tuckeroos and wattles.
South West Rocks Community Dune Care volunteers officially start their regular monthly working bees in late April, but some keen volunteers are out early tackling this environmental weed while it’s easy to spot.
If you have any Cassia on your property, you can help the local volunteers by bagging any ‘bean’ seed pods and putting them into your red-lidded garbage bin.
Each pod holds hundreds of seeds, which can be spread by birds and animals. And now is a good time to consider removing any cassia plants from your garden and replacing them with a non-invasive plant. A useful website is www.growmeinstead.com.au.
SWR Community Dune Care president Ian Burnett, said many of the weeds the local Dune Care and Bush Care groups remove from the bush started as ‘garden escapees.
“So it’s immensely helpful if residents of South West Rocks and Arakoon remove this plant from their properties. The fewer environmental weeds there are in the area, the less likely they are to spread to nearby public bushland,” Ian said.
“We’ve found the knee-high seedlings of Cassia are easy to pull up.
“But bigger plants are often better cut at the base and painted with herbicide. If people want some instructions, there’s a good video on You Tube called ‘Remove Cassia (Senna Pendula) Pittwater Ecowarriers 4’.
“Cassia seeds can lie dormant in the ground for up to 5 years, but over the years we’ve reduced that seed bank enormously, particularly at Back Beach.
“We tend to work on a few specific areas over several years until the native plants are coming back strongly and out-competing the weeds. Then we’ll move on to another area, and only monitor the earlier areas occasionally to remove any weed seedlings. It’s amazing how resilient the native bush can be when you take away the competition,” Ian said.
Even if you don’t want to venture out into the bush with the Dune Care volunteers, you can help by removing invasive plants such as Cassia from your property and nearby roadsides.
SWR Community Dune Care’s first working bee for 2018 is on Sunday, April 22 from 9am to 1pm, followed by a barbecue lunch.
The volunteer group works during the cooler months restoring and maintaining native bush on public land. They care for more than 15 kilometres of coastline from the mouth of the Macleay River to south of Smoky Cape Lighthouse.
For more information please see Facebook or contact Alan 0419 012 640, or email Ian: alandian8@bigpond.com.