The creeper is a choker
From the August 2008 edition of Agriculture Today.
Bridal creeper, a pretty garden creeper commonly used in hanging pots and floral arrangements, is twining its shiny green leaves and tendrils around our native bushland plants, choking and smothering them.
This is why it has been identified as one of 20 Weeds of National Significance in Australia.
The bridal creeper vines we see are only the tip of the iceberg.
More than 87 per cent of the plant is below ground, forming an invasive tuberous, rhizomatous root mass.
Vines begin to twine their way through our native bushland in early March, flowering in August and September.
Red berries are mature by December when the vines and leaves die back over summer.
Bridal creeper (Asparagus asparagoides) is spread by birds eating the red fruit, gardeners dumping garden rubbish in bushland and waterways and by the movement of people and machinery.
Jenene Kidston and Peter Proctor of the NSW Department of Primary Industries and Arthur Mulholland and Wendy Bushell of the Mid Western Regional Council are fighting the battle against bridal creeper in the Mudgee district by spreading the rust fungus Puccinia myrsiphylli, a selective disease of the plant.
The rust kills bridal creeper over a couple of seasons by building up and weakening the plant over spring. In summer the foliage is damaged and destroyed.
The disease survives over summer on dead foliage.
Autumn rain and cool weather triggers the production of new infective spores which invade the new foliage.
The rust happily produces new spores whenever there is moisture for at least eight hours a day and temperatures are between 10 and 20 degrees.
Contact Jenene Kidston or Peter Proctor, Mudgee, (02) 6372 4700.
