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theuserformallyknownasd00d

Do these acacias look poisoned?

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Hello I was driving around some forest looking at small acacia obtusifolia plants and noticed a few patches close to the road that were dying or dead.

Do people think they have been poisoned because they were growing close to the road or just dying from a disease? The funny thing was patches 100mtrs away were healthy..

Here's the photos, look forward to hearing opinions.

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Its not because they are getting covered in dust at times from the road?

EDIT - seen similar things on forestry "highways"

Edited by waterboy

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thats only if you reckon there is a fair bit of traffic on that road....

next guess woulda been too much water getting dumped in from the road drainage :wink:

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Looks poisoned to me.

Typical - some branches dead some doing fine, some growing tips dead some old leaves dead, and most of the dead leaves still hanging on the plant.

Roadside spraying is quite common for local council, main roads, and under power lines. and they don't discriminate between native and exotic.

Around here Main Roads have just boom-sprayed the closest 2-3 m along all of their roads.

Its a good time for spraying ATM, everything is gren and lush and the weather is good.

I don't think it's a good Idea because it just makes space for real weeds to grow, but thats what they do. For visability would be their reasoning.

Looks like it was done about a month ago, and I would say that the ones with the green branches will make a recovery.

They may not have been targeted, it may have just been spray drift or they didn't get hit properly. A proper hit should make them all look like pic.2.

But yeah I reckon it is definatly poisoned, probably glysophate.

Easiest way to tell for sure would be to check the plants around...hang on ...no...(just looked at the photos again)

Not glysophate, that looks like metsulfuron. See the grass is still alive but those little flat herbie weeds under the bushes in pic.1 have black centres where the growing tip has died.

Metsulfuron-methyl stops cell division in herbs, trees, and bushes (broard leaf weeds) but dosen't kill most grasses, and that black dead growing tip in herbacious weeds is typical.

I love metsulfuron, it's my favorate herbicide - leaving the grass helps to prevent weeds from resprouting. (In which case the wattles with green leaves will probably die :( )

But it is a class B herbicide which means that some weeds can develop a tolerance relitivly quickly so it should be cycled with grazon/conqurer on occasion to maintain good results.

Anyway that's my guess, I could be wrong, but that's what it looks like

Can't say why it was done if not roadside 'vegetation control', or accidentaly while targeting noxious weed.

but looks like pine trees so maybe forestery (logging) reserve regrowth supression?

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I think statakak nailed it. After another drive around this morning yeh everything's going nice and black etc at the growth tips of most plants. I did notice a lot of the ferny type things were resistant, ie in big thicks of the fern everything was green except for the acacias.

Thanks for your help here

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not sure if this needs clarifying or if you just didn't choose your words clearly but the ferns aren't so much resistant as they are not actually targeted by the chemical

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