Madeira Vine

Maderia vine (Anredera Cordifolia) is a rampant South American vine which is now officially classified as a primary threat to local rainforest remnants. The stems of Madeira vine can grow up to a metre a week, quickly smothering the canopy while producing an abundance of aerial tubers so that the sheer weight of an infestation can cause trees to collapse.

The vine was first brought to Australia by early settlers who planted it around their out door toilets because the leaves were considered an effective cure for constipation. The pioneers probably needed laxatives because of their predominantly meat and white flour diets. Prevention is so often the best cure.

Prevention is definitely the recommended cure for dealing with this seemingly irrepressible weed. Keep a look out for it in your garden and up your street. Get the sprouting tubers before they start to scramble and bin them. Don’t put them in the compost! The tubers can be spread by rodents, birds or via water courses and even during big winds. Madeira could turn up at your place at anytime - if it isn’t hiding in your back garden or road verge already. Be prepared to recognise and help eradicate this troublesome exotic weed.

If you do have a serious Madeira outbreak on your hands, proceed with caution. Here’s what NOT to do.

1) Never try to pull the vines down out of trees. The tubers will rain down from on high at the slightest tug and each one can produce a few thousand more in a single season once they start sprouting on the ground.

2) Never plant palms, other vines or fast growing shrubs in an area with an existing Madeira problem. The tubers can be impossible to find once these new plants become established.

3) Never bring in big machinery. Attempting to clear Madeira with heavy machinery is more likely to spread the problem further and help to plant the tubers deep underground. They can grow very extensive root and tuber systems that will send up endless runners to the surface. Chemical treatments, heavy mulching or hand removal of the runners on the surface will achieve nothing if the actual ‘mother load’ has become well established deeper underground.

It is debatable whether it is a good idea to spray chemicals on this weed.

In my experience, the bounce back with Madeira seems to be roughly the same whether you use chemicals or clear an area by hand. The prescribed (Landcare) method is to over spray and to scrape and paint every vine heading up into trees with glycophosphate. (Check out http://wilsonscreeklandcare.mullum.com.au/weeds/madeira_vine.html for the recommended chemical remedy).

The chemical-free method involves cutting every vine you see well above ground level and systematically removing all of the extensive stems, roots and tubers beneath. This can be labour intensive and quite disruptive to the soil in sensitive rainforest areas or near creeks, but personally I somehow doubt that the use of herbicide is a safer or easier option. I might leave a trail behind me like a bush turkey but I have witnessed significant regeneration on the rural sites I have worked on without the use of any chemicals.

Hand removal will only be successful if it is repeated a few times each season at each site. You may even come to find tuber spotting a remarkably satisfying pastime if you treat it as a weekly meditation rather than a painstaking chore. Although you will always miss some and more will rain down from the cut vines above* you can eventually beat even the most prolific Madeira outbreaks by regularly acting like a turkey! Persistence is the key.

*In my experience, even scraped and chemically painted vines drop viable tubers. I have also seen the tubers on cut but unpainted vines shrivel and die off. Benny Saunders

Editor declares a passionate interest in this subject. Benny has made a big difference to the rampant nature of Madiera in her garden.