Agapanthus Aggression

Now you may be a fan of electric blue - but the writer of this blog certainly is not.  The highly weedy Agies (agapanthus praecox spp orientalis) of the blue or white variety for years now have been popping up all over the place publicly speaking and also making a bee-line for your backyard.  Be mindful there is the much daintier variety that is not weedy that you can buy from the nursery, but the ones I'm talking about are tall plants and very invasive little trouble-makers.

This is my annual reminder to people to watch for those sprouting little blighters which take over in no uncertain terms and are wreaking havoc where native plants should be thriving.  For a long time they have been converging on your road verges, nature strips, native planting plots and,  it is getting to that time of year where the seeds are going to set themselves adrift along all manner of locations across Melbourne and coastal Victoria and replant themselves.

So the trick is to dead head them, well before the end of the flowering season. (I say, jump on the plant and give it a damn good thrashing, but I'm a touch biased. The plant can be tricky to pull out, as I found out on a landscaping job last summer. )

Here is a picture of what they look like sprouting up as a very young plant, and this is the time to remove them.



And here it is as a full blown flower in its crowning glory, but looks are deceiving!