I mentioned Mexican sunflower in a post earlier this week and mentioned that it’s and environmental weed, at least in the state of New South Wales. I want to talk about why it is a problem and why people should care, rather than thinking this ‘environmental weed’ business is for weirdos and hippies, or some other such nonsense.
Mexican sunflower-the plant
The binomial name of this plant is Tithonia diversifolia, which is in the Asteraceae (or daisy) family. It has these lovely bright yellow flowers that are the only reason why this plant would be grown anywhere (as I think the plant as a whole is rather ugly!).
This native of Mexico/Central America can reach 2-3 metres tall. The leaves of this plant are quite large and have 3-5 lobes, as you can see in the picture below.
Why has it been labelled and environmental weed?
Firstly-what is an environmental weed in New South Wales? An environmental weed is a plant that enters into native bushland, where this plant out-competes the native plants already present. When such plants are successful, the native flora can die out, resulting in the death and/or disappearance of the local native fauna that rely on the native plants for food and shelter. This resultant decrease in biodiversity is never a good thing anywhere, especially in the often small pockets of bushland left in any given area.
Why is this important and why people should care?
A decrease in biodiversity isn’t a good thing, even if you view life through the lens of everything needing to have a use for us people. We could find the next cure for cancer or any other disease that we can suffer from. Having healthy habitats, in all their forms, also helps to clean water and the air that we breathe, along with the absorption of carbon dioxide. Allowing native plant ecosystems to thrive anywhere in the world, in all their glory, allows them to continue to exist well into the future-I love the diversity that exists in the natural world.
For me, I think that all the weird and wonderful forms of life that exist in the world have just as much right to exist as we do, no matter what people insist on doing to destroy that. Some may sat that’s a bit fluffy and a bit odd, but I genuinely do enjoy watching wildlife doing its thing in its native habitat.
What can people do if they have this plant at home-both for lovers and haters of the plant?
For the haters, this is easy-just take it out of the ground and put it in your normal bin-this plant is one of those that can grow from a small sections of the stem or roots, so whatever you do, don’t compost it!
For those that’s do like this plant and already have it in their garden, the one thing you should ALWAYS do is deadhead those flowers-when the flowers start dying, remove them. This prevents the plant setting seed and prolongs flowering too. Basic, but good, practices like this often prevent plants becoming a problem in the first place.
As this plant is in the daisy family, lovers of the flower could find any number of other plants with almost identical flowers on plants that are actually prettier and less weedy too-so choose those instead!
References
https://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Tithonia~diversifolia