Learning to love invasive weeds (Talking Plants on the Wireless I)



For the next six weeks, rest your eyes and entertain your ears. Talking Plants moves to the (Australian) national broadcaster, ABC Radio National, for another summer series.

I'll be taking a short holiday break from weekly blogging, and posting instead a link to the most recent episode of Talking Plants 'the Radio Show'.

This second summer series (the first ran last summer) is broadcast on ABC RN at 10 am every Saturday from 19 December 2015 to 23 January 2016, or ... available soon after to podcast or stream from the RN website. Episode 1 (Learning to love invasive plants) is available now!

Guests this week
Fred Pearce: Fred writes for The Guardian and New Scientist and he’s author of a fascinating and disconcerting book called The New Wild: Why Invasive Species will be Nature's Salvation. [I don't know that I'm converted to a weed-infested utopia (to oversimplify and trivialise Fred's thesis grossly) but I am trying to view all plants dispassionately and eliminate unnecessary biases - and that's a good thing! Besides all that Fred Pearce is a pleasure to read and I like to be challenged.]
Kathryn Teare Ada Lambert: Research Associate at the University of New England in northern New South Wales.
Georgina Reid: see a story I posted in this blog a few weeks ago called Trees of Death, and an updated (and improved, by Producer Amanda Smith) version on the ABC RN website, When I die, please bury me (repeated for your reading pleasure on the other blog, Talking Plants Too).
Regular guest, Jim Fogarty

Image: Me in the studio, sitting opposite regular guest (and photographer) Jim Fogarty. 
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Comments

india flint said…
Though I love blackberry pie I'm not about to forgive Friedrich von Mueller for introducing the species here. Nor, I imagine, will th Californians ever sing his praises for mailing eucalyptus globulus seed across the Pacific. On the other hand, weeds are fair game for the dyer and can be harvested with impunity, unlike native flora. The first thing I do when travelling to foreign parts is get hold of the local weed list. Armed with it I can go gathering and know I'm doing something useful at the same time!
8:50 am, December 23, 2015
The Sceptical Botanist said…
Hi India! You are using invasives as a kind of a crop, which is interesting. Given they are there, it makes sense to find productive uses. This approach should also have you treating them as a plant of value, or interest, or intrigue, which is what we sometimes overlook. Like you I'm not ready to embrace wholeheartedly blackberries in Australia or eucalypts in California, South Africa, Spain, etc., etc... But I will enjoy each plant and flower on its merits, even that means a transient joy over a pretty flower followed by misery at its impact on the native vegetation... Best wishes, Tim
9:54 am, December 23, 2015
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