ID tagging of plants in plots

ID tagging of plants within sample plots for monitoring of growth began last week. There are 16 plots for monitoring plant growth rates and mortality on ImLal South. With Singarayer Florentine and Tim Simpson from the landscape restoration course at Federation University, we adapted plastic cattle tags, tieing them to every tree and shrub within eight of the 16 plots.


Each tag includes, written in texta, the plot and plant number as originally mapped four years ago. Also, a code that identifies the plant species. To avoid confusion between plots, different coloured tags were used for each plot.


While one of the plots had 100% of plants still present, a number of plots had been severely affected  by frost and by the neigbour's cavalier inter-row slashing. Moreover, all plots now have 'volunteers' present – such as silver wattles, blackwoods and the manna gums spreading from the shelterbelt.