Tradescantia fluminensis

Wandering Trad / Wandering Creeper

It's unlikely you'd find this plant on sale in a garden centre anywhere, but it has turned up at weekend markets, being sold to the unsuspecting and uninformed.

Once established in a garden, its weediness becomes quickly apparent. Out in the bush, and especially in riparian (streamside etc) environments, this groundcover can be incredibly difficult to control. It's a rampant creeper that forms dense mats that smother other plants and prevents seed germination.

Tradescantia fluminensis, also known by the politically incorrect common name of Wandering Jew, is a weed just about everywhere in Australia, except the Northern Territory and the ACT. It's banned in parts of New Zealand, and even though it's become such a problem in Australia, entry is still permitted.

What it looks like

The leaves are dark green and glossy and the stems are succulent, green and swollen at the nodes. Flowers are small, up to 2cm in diameter, with three white petals (there are also three green sepals sitting behind the petals but these aren't so obvious). Flowers are produced through spring and summer.

Shown here is a closeup of the flower of the closely related and also weedy species, Tradescantia albiflora.

The stems hug the ground, putting down roots at nodes wherever possible.

It's quite a distinctive plant and easily recognisable, particularly because of its succulent stems, and stem-hugging leaves.

It has two features which are useful to know. It is shallow rooting and it doesn't set seed in Australia.

However, it also takes root from the smallest fragments of stem, which makes it difficult to eradicate once an infestation has occurred.

Although it's not readily available anymore, it's still a very common plant in many gardens in Australia, which makes it one of the worst garden escapees.

T. fluminensis grows best in moist, shaded environments, but it can bounce back from near death in drier situations when water becomes available.

Control

Its shallow rooting means that smaller infestations can often be rolled up like a rug, but considerable care must be taken to ensure all plant parts are removed. And the site needs to be checked regularly for the inevitable regrowth.

In warmer locations, solarisation may be possible. This is the use of plastic sheeting to 'cook' the plant underneath.

A variation on solarisation is to lay the plastic over the already rolled up and dug up plant. This helps to destroy the plant.

As with all weeds of riparian environments, control is best undertaken on a catchment-wide basis.

Information sources:

Blood, K., 2001, Environmental Weeds - A field guide for SE Australia, CRC Weed Management Systems, published by C H Jerram Science Publishers.
Muyt, A., 2001, Bush Invaders of South-East Australia, published by R.G. & F.J. Richardson
Photographs courtesy of Helen Moss (Plants of Melbourne's Outer East)

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