Beware of invasive landscaping plants or trees

Rapid housing development in Malaysia has brought in various kind of landscaping plants and trees to appease the new home buyers or investors. Some of the new housing development landscaping have features some of the most exotic plants that come as far as South America or Africa. Although it can bring variety to the local breed trees but some of those imported species can be invasive.

In current landscaping literature, invasive plants or trees are defined as imported plants that can damage the current and local surrounding, invasive to local plants, alien and exotic. When it is planted together with the local breed plants, over time it can take over your surrounding landscape plants in no time.

These plant if left unchecked, will cause damage to our ecosystem and change the local landscapes forever. Here are a few examples of the invasive landscaping plants that might already started growing in your garden.

• Elephant Thorn (Mimosa Pigra) or “Duri Gajah” is growing fast in Malaysia which originated from tropical South America. It can also be found in many tropical countries and can be mistaken as a common landscaping plants. You can see the plant growing in uncommon places like nearby the TNB utility poles, campuses, along our riverbank and maybe even in your garden.

 

• Yellow Acacia (Acacia auriculaeformis) . Locally it is known as “Akasia Kuning” which is once very popular in the 70’s planted on the roadside as part of the landscape plants. Some say these plants originated from Australia or Papua New Guinea but some our neighbor claimed it comes from Indonesia. Whatever it is, now it is no longer popular and in fact grow as wild trees and out of control in many parts of Malaysia.

 

• Lantana (Lantana Camara). It has a very unpleasant name to the local – “Bunga Tahi Ayam” (Chicken Faeces Flower). Another tropical South American plant that have make big inroad to be part of Malaysia landscape trees. Nowadays, Lantana had grew into hundreds of hybrids and varieties in our Malaysian landscape. It can grow very tall and up to 5 meters high if left unchecked. The tree is also a crawling plant and can crawl under the shade of other bigger plants and over time take over your other beautiful landscape plants if left unattended.

To avoid having some wrong and harmful plants in a landscaping, it is important to engaged with gardeners who are experienced and professional. Contact us if you need any help from our gardeners.

On July 21, 2013   /   Trees and Plants  

Tags: landscape, plants, trees