Troublesome tumbleweeds known by many as “hairy panic” are once again piling up on houses and even blocking roads across regional New South Wales.
Farmers say they are frequently frustrated by the weeds, but an expert says practically nothing short of an extensive, two-year management program would be able to stop them from blowing across the countryside.
Hairy panic is generally used to refer to about seven species of weed, all of which are in the Panicum genus, which produce spherical seed heads that roll with the wind.
The plants grow in pastures, fallow fields and roadsides across the country and are most prevalent during the warmer months, with the problematic seed heads typically forming at the end of summer.
The tumbleweeds made international headlines in 2016 when huge piles of them engulfed homes in the Victorian town of Wangaratta.
Complaints and reports are once again surging off the back of multiple rainy summers, with some people finding three-metre-high piles of the seed heads on roads.
Why do people care?
The main problems posed by hairy panic include long clean-ups or traffic disruptions.
Cherilyn McKeever Bird said her family used an excavator to remove large amounts of the tumbleweed from one of their properties near Albury in late 2022.
The seed heads had accumulated underneath a railway bridge with cumbungi weed and were preventing floodwater from leaving the property.
“It is really annoying because it blows in from the paddocks and it catches on everything and builds up,” Ms McKeever Bird said.
“We just find it depressing because it’s just so constant.”
Marie Katalinic, a bus driver at Henty near Wagga Wagga, said she recently drove around a corner and was greeted by a pile of weeds so high it was almost to her vehicle’s roof.
“If I had gone on the other side of the road and someone else was coming we would have had a head-on [collision],” she said.
Do they cause any other problems?
Hairy panic can also cause serious health issues for animals and heightened fire risk.
If they eat large amounts of the weed, sheep can develop liver damage and photosensitisation, which makes their skin abnormally sensitive to sunlight.
Rural Fire Service Wagga Wagga zone commander Roger Orr said hairy panic could exacerbate the spread of blazes when it formed into large piles.
“It accumulates under trees … and adds to that fuel load which potentially gets fire up into the trees,” he said.
What can be done about it?
Experts generally agree it would be near-impossible to solve the issue completely.
Charles Sturt University plant biology specialist Leslie Weston said land owners could stop the weeds from growing on their property through herbicides and tilling, but ultimately seed heads could still blow in from other areas.
“If you put up fencing that’s one way to prevent that from coming into your property … but it’s really impossible to prevent all of it,” Professor Weston said.
Charles Sturt University crop science specialist Asad Asaduzzaman said the only way to address the problem would be two consecutive years of widespread management practices.
He said extensive weed management, including herbicide use, by landholders and governments would reduce the hairy panic seed bank and bring down numbers.
“One year would not be enough,” Dr Asaduzzaman said.
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