Surely everybody loves the Jacaranda trees whose glorious lavender haze adorns our suburbs in October/November. What kind of twisted fool could ever diss them? Well, here’s my exasperated gripe. These South American imports are an illusion of beauty. We’ve been seduced by their enticing colour. Jacarandas are to biodiversity what Barbara Cartland is to literature, all saccharine and no substance.
Over time, Sydneysiders have inexorably removed the city’s majestic Eucalypts and Angophoras (which provide vital food and habitat for our wildlife) and replaced them with these “bludger trees” which offer nothing to the environment but human eye candy. It’s now got to the stage where deluded individuals even book cruises to view the Jacarandas around Sydney Harbour…as if they were a natural phenomenon!
Sadly, Jacarandas have become ubiquitous from Avalon to Zetland (and everywhere in between). In South Africa’s Pretoria, they’ve “wised up”. The “Jacaranda City” (featuring 55,000 such trees) has now classified these purple pests as an “invasive alien plant” due to its destructive root system and thirst for water. You can tell I’m not a fan of Jacarandas but don’t get me started on Agapanthus … another introduced purple pollutant that seems to be the unimaginative “plant of choice” for McMansion dwellers everywhere.
The Agapanthus was enthusiastically promoted by controversial TV Gardener, Don Burke, but it’s actually an invasive weed from South Africa that can spread into bushland and overwhelm native species. It’s been said that if our great city hadn’t been plonked on top of Farm Cove, the Sydney environs could have become Australia’s most spectacular National Park. After all, our region contains over 2,000 native plant species, many more than in the entire U.K. But since Captain Cook first landed, we’ve been decimating the natural vegetation at warp speed. Walk down any suburban street and, chances are, you’ll find not one blade of remnant native grass.
If the odd “native” flower does appear, chances are it is not an indigenous species but a hybridised product of the horticulture industry, with a name such as “coconut ice” or “peaches and cream”. It’s these kinds of cultivars that provide an unnatural, but bountiful, food supply for Noisy Miners, identified as being the world’s most aggressive territorial bird. They’ve chased virtually every other avian species out of town!
Tim Low in his book “Feral Future” argues that gardening has done more to harm Australia’s environment than mining. It has certainly contributed greatly to the introduction of the more than 3,000 weed species which have become established in Australia at a cost to the economy of over $5 billion per annum (in terms of lost agricultural production and biodiversity impacts). In NSW, invasive weeds now make up a massive 21 per cent of the state’s total flora.
Even many local Councils are complicit in the “genocide” of indigenous species, especially in our streetscapes. Why would they want to plant locally endemic Banksias when they could choose, hay fever inducing, London Plane Trees or American Liquidambars with invasive roots?
The original Sydney flora is diverse, beautiful, climatically hardy, needs no fertilizers or pesticides and supports our fauna. To plant these purple monstrosities is not just staggeringly boring, it’s…dare I say it? Un-Australian!