Weed of the month- Madeira vine

Madeira vine (Anredera cordifolia) also known as potato vine or lambs tail vine is a vigorous climber which can produce thousands of aerial tubers along its stem.

Madeira vine blankets and smothers trees and shrubs and can lead to their death. It is very heavy on the tree canopy and will collapse small trees. Madeira vine is a garden escapee and is native to South America. Madeira vine has light green, wide heart shaped, fleshy 4-5 cm leaves.

It produces dense blankets of creamy flower spikes from December to April. The flower spikes are 10 cm long and each spike is made up of many individual small flowers. These flower spikes resemble a lamb’s tails. At its worst, Madeira vine can produce thousands of small light brown or green potato-like tubers which fall to the ground and sprout new vines.

The vine has a vigorous root and tuber system, and this adds to the difficulties of controlling the weed.

When small out breaks occur the underground root system can be carefully hand pulled and hooked up where the ground tubers cannot re-root. This will cause death of the root system in the following months. Aerial tubers have been observed to be still attached to vine stems two years after they were pulled from the ground.

Some aerial tubers dry out after exhibiting vegetative ‘spurts’. The more immature the aerial tubers, the quicker they will dry. Large heavy clusters seem to have the capacity to fragment freely. Vines sprouting on the ground surface from fallen aerial tubers may be either:

• placed in the freezer, which is the surest way of killing the tubers quickly;
• treated with foliar applied herbicides; or
• hand pulled, bagged and put into the sun and then disposed of to prevent regeneration.