The key, couplet 2a

The weed NSW bans from every sale on the Coast

One plant on the region’s priority list carries three separate sentences of law: a ban on the dealings, a zone with duties inside it, and a duty that needs no zone at all. This is what NSW’s bitou bush entry says.

General information from NSW Government sources; the native plant law is in the Biodiversity Conservation Act and the parks’ own rules, and the National Parks and Wildlife Service is the place to ask; the weed rules are the ones the Department of Primary Industries’ WeedWise lists for the region.

A key, in botany’s sense: answer one question, and the next narrows the plants until one rule is left.

Growing in a national park, nature reserve or state conservation area (Brisbane Water, Bouddi, Wyrrabalong, Munmorah, Dharug)Ask NPWS first.

Growing anywhere elseGo to 2.

On NPWS’s Bouddi National Park page, visitors are asked to help preserve the natural environment and cultural sites, and the page states that all fauna, flora and rock formations are protected.
A weed under a prohibition on dealings (such as bitou bush, lantana, Cape broom)Never sold, swapped or offered.

Any other plantGo to 3.

The region’s bitou bush entry forbids five dealings: importing it into the state, and selling, bartering, exchanging or offering it for sale. WeedWise lists the same line for lantana and for Cape broom. And anyone who deals with any plant, and knows, or ought to know, of a biosecurity risk, must prevent, eliminate or minimise that risk as far as is reasonably practicable.
A protected species, picked or cultivated for cut flowers or foliage, for commercial purposesGo to 4.

Anything else (a farm flower, a rose in a garden)No cut-flower licence; a threatened plant: see below.

The department’s licensing page asks for a biodiversity conservation licence to pick or cultivate protected plant species for cut flowers and foliage for commercial purposes; the species are the ones listed in Part 1 of Schedule 6 of the Biodiversity Conservation Act. And you do not need a licence to pick, keep, buy or sell protected plants grown as a hobby rather than for a commercial purpose, or material obtained from a licensed harvester or grower, or to pick a protected plant cultivated on private land if you are the landholder or have the landholder’s consent. Whatever the route, the legal sourcing of plant material from licensed stock or with the landowner’s permission is always required. Threatened species must not be harvested from the wild for commercial use, and may be harvested from plantation grown (cultivated) plants under a grower licence.
Group 4: waratahGrower licence only; no wild harvest.

Group 3: Christmas bells, flannel flower, Gymea lily flowers, grass tree flowersA licence, and NPWS tags.

Groups 1 and 2: boronias, hairpin banksia, drumsticks, Gymea lily leaves, grass tree leavesA licence; a forest products licence in a state forest.

The cut-flower plan’s schedule puts the species at high risk of exploitation in Group 4, where only grower licences may be issued; Group 3 needs a licence and Biodiversity and Heritage Regulator tags on all material, whether from the wild or cultivated; Groups 1 and 2 need a wild harvest or grower licence and no tags, and picking in a state forest runs under a forest products licence from the Forestry Corporation instead.

1a Ask NPWS first.
1b Go to 2.
2a Never sold or swapped.
2b Go to 3.
3a Go to 4.
3b No cut-flower licence.
4a Grower licence only.
4b A licence and tags.
4c Licence or forest licence.

The flowers at the ends have one row each in the register on the home page: waratah, christmas bells, flannel flower, gymea lily, grass tree, boronia, hairpin banksia, drumsticks. All of the key, with every row, is on the centralcoastflowers.com.au home page.

The first sentence: the dealings

The Coast meets bitou bush through the region’s list of priority weeds, and the entry for the plant opens with a category heading as plain as its subject: a prohibition on certain dealings.

What the prohibition covers is one sentence long. The listing rules out five dealings with the plant: it must not be brought into the state, and it must not be sold, bartered, exchanged or offered for sale.

Read slowly, that sentence is wider than a shop. Barter and exchange are the older words for a swap, and the listing bans the swap as flatly as the sale; the last phrase, offered for sale, reaches the moment before any money moves at all. And the first phrase is about the border: the plant must not even be brought into New South Wales.

The same sentence does duty further down the same list: lantana and Cape broom each sit under a prohibition on certain dealings of their own, and the weeds guide on this site follows those entries in full.

Lantana, Cape broom and the plants listed beside them

The second sentence: the zone, and the band it leaves out

The listing does not stop at the ban. Under a second heading, the Bitou Bush Biosecurity Zone, it defines an area of the state with duties attached, and the definition is written as one exception.

The zone takes in all land within the state except one coastal strip: land within 10 kilometres of the Pacific Ocean’s mean high water mark, from Cape Byron in the north to Point Perpendicular in the south. Two points on the coast are named; the band between them is the exception the zone is written around.

Inside the zone, the listing asks for the weed to be eradicated where that is practicable, for as much of it as is practicable to be destroyed, and for whatever remains to be suppressed; and new infestations must be reported to the local control authority.

The entry has no map: the definition stands on two named points and a distance from the water, and it is built to be read against the ground the reader actually stands on.

The third sentence: the duty that needs no zone

Underneath the specific listing sits a general one that catches every pest plant in the state’s scheme: all pest plants are regulated with a general biosecurity duty to prevent, eliminate or minimise any biosecurity risk they may pose.

The region’s page puts the duty this way: anyone who deals with any plant, knowing or in a position where they ought to know of a biosecurity risk, is bound to see the risk prevented, eliminated or minimised, as far as is reasonably practicable.

This is the sentence that needs no biosecurity zone to work. It attaches to the person dealing with the plant wherever they are, and dealing is the broad word the page chose; for a weed with a ban on it, the duty is the general case of the same logic the ban states in particular.

Where the Central Coast sits in the listing

The Coast enters the system through the regional list rather than through a page of its own. The priority-weed list that carries bitou bush is the one for the Greater Sydney region, and the region’s own note names its local council areas: Bayside Council, Blacktown, Blue Mountains, Burwood, Camden, Campbelltown, Canada Bay, Canterbury-Bankstown, and the Central Coast among them.

That is how the key’s second question reaches the Coast: the plant is on the region’s list, the region takes in the Coast’s council area, and the ban on the dealings is written for the whole state. Three sentences of law for one weed, and the key’s answer to the Coast reader is the shortest of them: never sold, swapped or offered.

One more entry on the same region’s list keeps the Coast in view differently. For asparagus fern, sicklethorn and Senegal tea, the regional measures classify the Central Coast Council area as the core infestation area, with an exclusion zone established for the rest of the region; those listings, and the plants they name, are the subject of the weeds guide on this site.

The Coast’s core infestation list, in full