NOXIOUS WEEDS IN THE NORTH ISLAND

Otago Witness, Issue 2010, 1 September 1892, Page 7

NOXIOUS WEEDS IN THE NORTH ISLAND

A great deal of uneasiness prevails in the North as to what steps the Hon. John M'Kenzie is going to take against the briars and gorse. Both of these plants have been spreading very widely in many districts for a great many years, and to eradicate them now, at oven a good long notice, would hardly be possible, even at the expense of ruining the present owners of land infested with them. Few farmers who have not had actual experience v'th sweet briars know what a difficult matter it is to get rid of them, and also how a want of knowing as to how to deal with them will often make the matter worse instead of better, and result in endless labour and expense to worse than no purpose. There is a time of the year — namely, when the plant is in full flower and approaching the berry-bearing stage (it does not last over six or eight weeks)— when, if the briar is dug out, taking away the •♦bulb" (where the roots all meet) all the roots left in the ground will bleed to death and die out ; but if these plants are so treated at any other time every scrap of root left in the ground will grow, and a the plants will be spread to an extent impossible to get rid of. The seeds give far less trouble than is gener-

ally imagined, because the birds neither carry so many aB is generally supposed, nor carry those few far, and whenever a seedling brier is seen growing on clear land, it is the easiest thing possible to .take it up ; but years and years of close culture will not get rid of the roots.

There are districts where three or four times the value of the land, after it has been cleared, would not pay the expense of doing so. The writer knows a case in which a farmer laid out L 6 an acre upon clearing briers, and kept the land in close cultivation for five years afterwards, and still the briers are coming up. And he knows another case, in which the owner was ruined from the expenses of clearing briers, and where the land, after 16 yearn' cultivation, still produced briers. More than that, there is an orchard over 50 years old in the North, which has been cultivated all that time, and still the briers have to be cut down every year. # No one now alive remembers how long it is since the first clearing of this old orchard, but the briers are there now.

Under these circumstances, it is not to be wondered at that the settlers in such districts look forward with dread to the -probable advent of an " obnoxious weeds inspector," with his peremptory orders, and notices to perform impossibilities, with the alternative of fines aud costs, and more fines and costs. The honorable Minister has been asked to limit his requirements to making the county councils and road boards keep the highways clear (or from seeding), and the settlers clearing their road frontages and other boundary lines, for say half a chain back. If this were enforced upon all, the natural result would be, to begin with, a check|to the spread of thejplants, and in the second place the gradual clearing of the lands, done by the settlers for their own sakes. But there can be no doubt that if settlers are ordered, under threat of a prosecution, to at once lay out ready money equal to two or three times the value of their properties, there will be found but a very few who are able to do so, and the greater part of those settlers will be rained. There are not wanting people who have no sympathy with hard-working settlers, and who would feel quite indifferent to the sufferings or ruin of this moßt useful class, but even these musk admit that this would not affect the desired object, as their successors would be no more able to eradicate the briars than they themselves; nor indeed does it seem absolutely necessary that New Zealand should be free from weeds that exist in all other countries. Nokth Island Settles.

At Cromwell on Arbor Day, and subsequently, 350 evergreen and 1100 deciduous trees were planted on publio ground.