BIDI-BIDI.

Feilding Star, Volume 4, Issue 673, 4 January 1926, Page 7

BIDI-BIDI.

A TROUBLESOME WEED

PROBABLE NATURAL ENEMY

Agriculturists, and particularly wool growers, will be interested in onio investigations, made recently by the Department of Agriculture, which seem to point to the discovery of a natural enemy of that troublesome weed,, bidi-bidi. The presence of this vcegtable pest in large quantities on sheep runs is well known to- reduce greatly the selling value of wool. Recently the Department received a report from Mr W. H. Montgomery, of Little River, Canterbury, to the effect- that bidi-bidi was disappearing, on , certain hillsides in the district,, and particularly in' the Puha Valley. Mr'F. E. Ward, Instructor in Agriculture, investigated the mattor, and was told by Mr J. McGowan that on certain faces the bidi-bidi had blackened, and had almost disappeared; whilst in other, places it was still Nourishing. Mr Ward found that remnants of the plant, in the localities- where they had blackened, still remained, and at the roots of these remnants ho discovered several forms of insect life. Specimens of these were forwarded to the Government mycologist at 'Wellington, who reported that of these insects a crane fly larva was most likely to have been responsible for the condition of the-plants. The result of these investigations opens up the posibility of the introduction of this natural enemy in districts badly infested with bidi-bidi and the ultmate extermination of the weed.