234 Journal of Agriculture. [lo April, jgog. 



PROCLAIMED HEDGE PLANTS. 



Alfred J . Eivart, D.Sc, Ph.D., F.L.S., Government Botanist. 



Surprise is often expressed that certain hedge plants should be on the 

 list of proclaimed plants and that being on the list no steps are taken to 

 insure their complete suppression. 



This applies to such plants as Gorse, Cape Broom, English Broom, 

 Acacia-hedge, and Box Thorn all of which are more or less useful hedge 

 plants under special conditions, or, in the case of Sweet Briar and Black- 

 berry Bramble, do little harm in hedges, although highly obnoxious if 

 allowed to run wild. Strictly speaking, the Act requires the complete 

 eradication of proclaimed plants, but where a hedge plant is proclaimed 

 to pre\ent its undue spread on pasture and other land, common sense deters 

 Thistle Inspectors from doing more than to demand that, where an estab- 

 lished hedge exists of a proclaimed plant, it shall be kept properly cut 

 and trimmed within reasonable limits such as 3 feet broad and 6 feet 

 high. 



The only cases in which the Thistle Act needs to be applied to hedge 

 plants in all its stringency, would be where the hedge contains plants which 

 are directly injurious or poisonous and apt when abutting on public roads 

 to affect passers-by or stock to their detriment. 



As is well known, the administration of the Thistle Act is in the hands 

 of the Shire Councils, the functions of the Agricultural Department being 

 mainly to give advice and to see that no mistakes are made either as 

 regards identification, or as to the plants proclaimed. The usual way 

 in which a plant becomes proclaimed for the whole State, is that some shire 

 applies for its proclamation within their district. After an examination 

 of the plant and a report as to its properties, history, powers of spreading, 

 &c., proclamation is granted if the plant appears to be a really dangerou? 

 one. Usually the first proclamation is followed by requests from other 

 shires from time to time for the extension of the proclamation to within 

 their boundaries. As .soon as the plant has in this way been proclaimed 

 for a number of shires, it is then proclaimed by the Department for the 

 whole State, provided that doing so appears likely to prevent or retard 

 further spread, or, in the case of a hedge plant, to check its introduction 

 to districts for which it is not suited or where it is likely to prove 

 dangerous. The whole of the plants mentioned above have been proclaimed 

 in this way. 



Gorse for instance was separately proclaimed for no less than 58 

 shires before being proclaimed for the whole State. An important reason 

 for uniformity in such cases is that, where a plant is widely proclaimed, 

 there is a manifest injustice to every land-owner in a proclaimed shire 

 whose propertv borders on a shire where a plant, proclaimed in his shire, 

 gr'^ws but is not proclaimed. 



Private individuals rarely take action under the Act, but the sting of 

 the injustice is removed when the individual has the power to take action 

 if he thinks fit to do so. 



Apart from the true thistles, barely half-a-dozen plants have been 

 directly proclaimed by the Department for the whole State, and these 

 have been all plants well known as poisonous (Hemlock &c.) or as 

 dangerous weeds (Dodder, Bindweed &c.). Naturally, an introduced plant 

 known to have great jx>wers of spreading and to be difficult to eradicate 

 is more readily proclaimed than a native one already spread widely over 

 the State. Thus Erechihitcs qiiadridoitata, the so-called Cotton weed, is 



