BEWARE PLANTING SILVER POPLAR.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 2528, 11 January 1923, Page 3

BEWARE PLANTING SILVER POPLAR.

A writer in our Palmerston morning contemporary says that less than four years ago a resident at- the local seaside solved the sand drift nuisance by planting silver poplar. As a matter of fact silver poplar has been growing at, the seaside for the past fifteen years and is becoming a curse. The Avriter also states that, stock crop it. That is not the experience at the seaside. It is utter foolishness to compare silver pop!ar with lupin and marram grass in reclaiming sand drift country. The two latter can easily he eradicated after creating a lop soil for subsequent grass crops hut not so the silver poplar. There" are varieties of trees which could he planted in the sandy country as shelter belts and assisted hv systematic planting of lupin and marram grass thousands of acres subject to the sand drift could, in time, he made fertile. But spare the land from the spread of silver poplar, Avhich Avhen properly established is a for worse menace than the dreaded goals me- or blackberrv.