EXIT RAGWORT.

Waipa Post, Volume 38, Issue 2270, 19 February 1929, Page 5

EXIT RAGWORT.

Sir, —A sigh of relief no doubt has gone up from the farming community, especially from the dairy farmers, I when the knowledge was spread about that the release of the cinnabar moth for the control of the ragwort plant had become an accomplished fact. But a second sigh is probably due, for we may have thrown away a great and golden opportunity. I have known beekeepers to show displeasure because a neighbouring farmer ploughed a field of clover and made a sowing to produce, instead, a crop of oats; also to feel very much annoyed because someone wantonly destroyed by fire some golden bloom of gorse. I wonder what value the beekeeper has set on the ragwort bloom ? I know in the Old Country the flower is very attractive to bees and little boys, for I remember quite well when a boy of school age, and after school hours, walking miles up the river Clyde > to large patches of ragwort, and running from plant to plant catching bees until I had a bottle full, then taking them home right into my bedroom; with a handful of sugar (and a little startagem) placing them into a box at one end of a large clothes chest to make honey. My mother, of course, had a happy knack of leaving the window open to air the room, and my " catch " always escaped. Bee-keep-ing as a hobby gave way to trout-fish-ing, and I found that the ragwort plant was the means of bringing about a olentiful supply of bait for the sport. Let me say that as far as I remember the rooting system of the ragwort plant is of quite a different structure from that found here in the North Island. The tap-root there is more pronounced, and probably the plant has less fibrous roots. In fact, I don't think it can be considered to have a tap-root at all here. The bait referred to was a creamy white grub found at the root of the plant; the plant being pulled, it was easily seen if the tap-root was hollowed out — that is, often by the grub; if so, and the grub was not there, it was readily found in the soil. I examined a ragwort plant yesterday which had wilted, and I found right at the base of the stem, level with the ground, that it was ring-barked about an inch wide, and several small, light-blue grubs were nestling there. It will be interesting to know and watch the principal method of attack of the Cawthron insect when it comes along. Now, it is just here that we may have gone astray when we urged the scientists to bring destruction on the ragwort plant without first perhaps trying to find out its true value —what happiness, profit and pleasure it might bring to life, apart from city people deriving pleasure at the sight of great stretches of yellow bloom and taking home large bouquets. I find that members of the farming community are on a par with the city folk in their admiration for the plant. A farmer's wife told me that years ago she longed for a flower garden, and, noticing a bright yellow flower in the paddock, she immediately transplanted it carefully as her first trophy to her garden plot. I also recall that a farmer, paying tribute to the scenic beauty of the golden, bloom, with a wave of the hand remarked that it had picturesque beauty all its own, and in its profusion a great many unsightly logs were hidden for a season. Another farmer said that the sheep ate the plant in the spring, and what they didn't eat grew and provided shelter for them in the hot summer months. Now, with all these delightful pleasures and the bee-keeper presumably deriving a profit, our next step should have been the searching deep for hidden treasures and bringing them to light, and enlisting the services of the chemist to discover such drugs of curative value and otherwise chemicals for high explosives, such as are used in war time. Certainly there is enough material in or on the plant to cause explosion between neighbours, and further research might have revealed that the residue could have been turned into high-grade paper. Certainly it is producing reams of paper just now, and the final act would have been for the dairy farmer to grasp the golden opportunity, taking the golden harvest and adding it as another profitable side-line to his already lengthy list. But it would have been rather mortifying to some sheep farmers who have decreed not to put a sickle to the weed but leave the sheep to do the work, at the same time allowing large patches to flourish profusely along the boundaries for years, knowing quite well that in general dairy farmers have on their side only hand labour to cope with the invasion. I say that it would be rather mortifying for them to know that those same patches of ragwort would be supplying seed plants abundantly under research had it been finalised as noted to enable the dairymen to garner untold wealth. Our first sigh intoxicates: our second sigh sobers. —I am, etc., J. RIDDELL.