It’s a toss-up whether he’s more annoyed about a possible blackwater event, which kills a lot of fish and shrimp in the river, or the sudden eruption of bindii, Tribulus terrestris, which makes a lot of extra work for him.
Either way, he finds no use for heavy summer rain: the lawn seems to enjoy it and it settles the dust but the weeds and mosquitoes diminish any other enjoyment.
He thinks the blackwater might not be too much of a problem at the moment because most of the creeks have dried up completely. If heavy rain fills them now, though, when they’re full of leaf litter — and we have another burst of heavy rain in a few weeks’ time after the pools of leaves have stewed into a black toxic tea – that’s when it could spell trouble for the river.
As for the bindii, well, an immediate flourishing is guaranteed to happen. Otherwise known as caltrop, goat’s head or puncture vine, the bindii vine germinates straight after rain in late spring and summer, when the soil is warm.
Within three weeks of germination it produces a woody fruit with sharp spines on it; each fruit comprises five burrs that split readily and each burr has two uneven spines on it and carries four seeds – so a single bindii fruit has 20 seeds in it.
The Boss says a bindii plant left to its own devices can produce 1000 fruit pods – and 20,000 seeds!
The spines on these bindii burrs are tough and deteriorate very slowly, even after a wet winter, so they are a deeply unpleasant thing for a dog to step on. One of the noblest tasks The Boss can perform, in fact, is extracting a bindii burr from one of my delicate paws while I am balancing on the other three.
That’s after I’ve had to hop along beside him for a while – loudly whimpering — to attract his attention.
So the spines serve the purpose of helping the burr to spread its seed by lodging in paws, feet, the fur and wool of moving stock and the tyres of cars and farm machinery.
He reckons they’ve been hated by shearers and tomato pickers for ever and they damage the lips and mouths of grazing livestock. Shearers have been known to walk off properties where the bindii is bad and the sheep are covered in burrs.
Cyclists don’t like them either – a bindii spine has no trouble penetrating a bike tyre, and fixing those punctures keeps the local bike shops busy from now on.
Tribulus terrestris was native to the Mediterranean region but is now widespread around the world in the middle latitudes and will survive in most soil types – but thrives in the loose, sandy soils we get along the river.
The seeds don’t all germinate at once either – there are separate eruptions of bindii a few days after every summer rain. That’s when The Boss dons his spray pack and goes looking for them – muttering the old cockies’ lament of “One year’s seeding, seven year’s weeding.” Woof!
The General is The Boss’s dog. For more yarns, visit sheppnews.com.au/thegeneral
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