The New Zealand Plant Conservation Network

The Miscanthus one is worrying - I remember all the same justifications being used for Pampas introduction - particularly that they will only use sterile plants! We know how that turned out. I've seen extensive forests of this species overseas (in the tropics admittedly) and it forms 2-4m high monoculture over extensive areas and local stock and goats don't really seem to eat it.

Hi Mike, I looked into it yesterday after getting an invite to a field day at Aylesbury. They are using the hybrid M x giganteus? but the hybrids are a variable swarm and seed viability is reported at 49 - 0.7%. However the apomictic parent M. chinensis is readily available in NZ garden centres and this is the one that is a problem in the US. So better the hybrid I guess but still they are using the biofuel angle to sell it, which is bogus because it will need to be grown over vast areas for that to be viable.
I downloaded 3 pdfs yesterday on the genetics and viability, contact me direct and I can forward them to you if you are interested.
http://www.bioenergy.org.nz/documents/news_events/webinars/Peter-Brown-presentation-121011.pdf

If you could send me those pdfs Graeme? [email protected]. Even with a 0.7% fertility (I presume this is number of flowers) then each plant would still be producing 10 to 100 viable seeds per year. The rhizomes also look like an issue as these would be difficult to remove from an invaded site