Australian Plants - Australian Fairy Grass Ain't No Sweet Fairy (with a dash of poetry)

Beautiful name but don't be deceived. It flies through the air with the greatest of ease. No spot is sacred from its intrusive flight - not even the outback dunny.

It looks like wheat, but lighter in weight - like an epiphyte. But it includes both living and non living things on its support hit list. It loves to build up on fences and house walls.

The flowers may be feathery and fan-like, ranging in colour from mystical pink to soft silver, but the stems feel like a brush with a pincushion, many pincushions. Jeans provide a wonderful support system for fairy grass. And tyres and shoes give the seeds a great free ride.

Fairy grass usually inhabits clay soil flood plains down the east coast of Australia. The flowers have both male and female organs pollinated by the wind. The seed is apparently edible, and can be ground into flour, but some believe it is a dangerous weed.

And indeed it is. News reported on Australia's Channel 9 tonight (5.01.08) showed residents of a country town, (Ballarat in Victoria) inundated with fairy grass, up to 2 metres high. At times, residents needed to brush it aside to walk. A dog struggled to leap over the surprise visitor to his front door. 3 of the district's lakes are choking with fairy grass. There is no magical solution. So desperate is the community, that a massive burnoff on Lake Learmonth, one of the 3 lakes, will be undertaken within the week. (Read "Residents swim in grass plague" and "Fairy grass forces family indoors" from "The Courier", Ballarat.)

"Miscanthus" is the more scientific name for fairy grass. It is also known as "weeping grass" and "maiden grass". Such beautiful, romantic names for an all round pesky pest! Weeping fairy maiden grass (keep in mind it's a multi-purpose heterosexual) even builds an army phalanx (safety in numbers) so that other plants can't grow and germinate! To add extra punch, its texture assures it is an extreme fire risk. Mowing, (lots of mowing) is needed to rid nature of these "pseudo fairies". Yes! An all out massacre is the only way.

O, but they look so beautiful

Flying without wings!

Such delicate

Airy

Fragile little things

But I hear a whisper from the dim dim past

"A wooden horse is meant to last"

A wooden horse? It had no wings!

"Ah...But don't you know

Legends bearing gifts

Forever sing...

They're cast!"

FOOTNOTE: This fairy is so devious as not to provide a pic of its Australian beauty, except in Bitmap, which is unsuitable for HubPage format! JPEG images may be found on a German website, but all the explanation is in German. Therefore, I am not absolutely sure what could be said about the plant. So instead, for the sake of yin and yang, there are pics of "nice" fairies.