Billardiera heterophylla

Western Australian Bluebell Creeper at Aranda, ACT

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Identification history

	Billardiera heterophylla	2 Sep 2016	MichaelMulvaney
	Billardiera heterophylla	2 Sep 2016	CathB

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3 comments

MichaelMulvaney wrote:

3 Sep 2016

WA Bluebell Creeper is probably worth taking out while there are only a few scattered plants about

Mike wrote:

3 Sep 2016

I have a list of plants available from Yarralumla Nursery dated 23 March 1990 which lists Sollya heterophylla, which is the old name for this. The list has several other current weeds. It would be interesting to get other lists and see which plants have 'gone bush'.

MichaelMulvaney wrote:

5 Sep 2016

That's exactly what I did for my PhD thesis, collecting plant introduction data for Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide from 1788 to 1980. Only a small percentage of plants sold by nurseries had become weeds at that stage, but in 1980 the impact and control of these weeds was costing us 400 million a year, more at that time than the Australian nursery trade was worth a year. There was also a very strong relationship between the amount of plants sold by nurseries and the probability that a plant would become a weed. The data and findings of the PhD help establish the Australian Weed Risk Assessment system now currently in use to try and minimise future problems, but unfortunately we have many time bombs already sitting in our gardens.

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