88 TEE WEEDS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



Stinkwort (Inula graveolens Desf.). 



(COMPOSITE: Daisy Family.) 



Botanical Name. Inula, a Latin classical name for Elecampane, and, 

 perhaps, a contraction of the word Helenium, which was applied to the 

 same species. By mediaeval writers it was written Enula (Bentley and 

 Trimen). Graveolens, the Latin word for strong-smelling. 



Botanical Description. 



This will be found by persons interested in the botany of the plant at page 

 468 of vol. v of De Caudolle's Prodrontus. It is there described as a hairy- 

 viscid, very branched, small shrub; the lower leaves being oblong-lanceolate 

 and sub-dentate, while the upper leaves are linear and entire. 



This pest is one the most serious that has ever afflicted Australia, and 

 is much better known in South Australia and Western Australia. I 

 appealed to Mr. W. Catton Grasby, who is a native of the former State, 

 and who has been for a number of years agricultural editor of the 

 Western Mail in the latter State. He is a well-known agricultural 

 authority, and he has favoured me with the following valuable and 

 interesting account of it : 



Introduction of Stinkwort. I think that the late Dr. Schomburgk was cor- 

 rect in stating that it was first introduced in the Onkaparinga district of 

 South Australia, and the date he gives, 1863, is probably the year or so before 

 the plant was brought under his notice. My father was chairman of the Onka- 

 paringa District Council, and it must have been about 1865 or 1866 that he 

 pointed out to us children a patch of green in the summer time on Mr. Spoehr's 

 farm not far from the Balhannah bridge across the Onkaparinga River. I 

 could only have been 6 or 7 years old at the time, but I have a mental picture 

 of that spot, and remember how the pest increased from year to year until it 

 spread all over the district, and we boys had the yearly task of pulling and 

 hoeing it up for some time on our farm. There is no possibility of my memory 

 playing me false in regard to the spread of the pest and the efforts made by 

 many farmers to keep it in check. The dates must be approximately correct, 

 because I left Balhannah to go to school in Adelaide when I was 10 years old. 

 which would be the beginning of 1870, and we had then had a number of years' 

 experience in trying to keep the pest off the farm. 



I do not think that Mr. Spoehr really knew how the weed came on his place. 

 He was a German, and had obtained seeds from Germany. That is all that is 

 known about it. When my father first saw it spreading, he took green speci- 

 mens to Dr. Schomburgk, Director of the Adelaide Botanic Gardens, and I can 

 remember from boyhood my father giving an account of the interview. The 

 doctor said, " Vot is de use of dese plants? I cannot identify from them. 

 You must bring me plants in flower." As soon as the plants were in flower, 

 father took him further specimens, and in due course the doctor identified the 

 plant as " Stinkaster," or Inula graveolens. The doctor said that it was; 

 a common weed in Germany and Central Europe, but riot dangerous, and he 

 persisted in this attitude for some time, until the pest got a firm hold. By 1879 

 he had changed his views. The plants, as I first remember them on Mr. 

 Spoehr&'la^d, would be f f rcni 18 inches to fully 2 feet tall, because the land 

 was ricfrjatuj they 'were; not crowded. My father endeavoured to get the plant 

 proclaimed 'a noxious weed, but he was unsuccessful. Years later, when the 

 pest Jbjid r |nietK>me e^taftlisheft and beyond control, my father, in recalling the 

 above" ^cls^us'ed ,to sa#V "^i"; instead of bothering about names and regulations, 

 I had taken you boys and anyone else we could have got to help, and pulled and 

 burned out every plant, we might have exterminated it." 



Spread of the Pest. The above shows that it is something over 50 years 

 since the plant was introduced, and I have watched it spread from Spoehr's 



