"We think it was introduced in the mid 18 hundreds by nurseries, and then it became really, really popular and people grew it in their garden and then people started to use the lovely lush foliage in the bridal bouquet".

Like so many fashionable items, it soon went out of vogue. Plants were thrown out, and in the wild they began to take over the natural vegetation. Bridal Creeper became recognized as a major environmental pest across Australia in the early 1990s.

"In New South Wales you get the first shoots in March and then by July it's two to three metres high. It's because it has this system of roots and tubers. It just gets a lot of energy and moisture and it gives it the advantage over the native plants".

CSIRO's Dr. Louise Morin, working with the Weed Co-operative Research Centre, travelled to South Africa, the home of the plant, and discovered that there it is kept under control by insects and a rust fungus. She bought back some samples of the rust to test on plants in CSIRO's quarantine facility.

She found that the rust fungus was capable of causing severe disease and eventually killing off the creeper, but it was harmless to all other plants.

"They produce powdery spores, a bit like talcum powder that just sorts of get picked up by the wind. And then land on the foliage and you need a bit of moisture and germinate gets in and then starts the process again."

In the first 18 months of its release, at sites across the country, the rust managed to reduce fruit production of the bridal creeper by more than 75 per cent. To speed up its spread, the rust now needs to be introduced to other affected areas by hand, before bridal creeper will finally be bought under control.