This has been introduced with grass seeds from England, and is very destructive.

It is stated that excellent pasture was in three years destroyed by this weed, which absolutely displaced every other plant on the ground.

It grows in every kind of soil, and is said even to drive out the white clover, which is usually so powerful in taking possession of the soil.
In Australia another composite plant, called there the Cape-weed (Cryptostemma calendulaceum), did much damage, and was noticed by Baron Von Hugel in 1833 as "an unexterminable weed"; but, after forty years' occupation, it was found to give way to the dense herbage formed by lucerne and choice grasses.
In Ceylon we are told by Mr.Thwaites, in his _Enumeration of Ceylon Plants_, that a plant introduced into the island less than fifty years ago is helping to alter the character of the vegetation up to an elevation of 3000 feet.

This is the Lantana mixta, a verbenaceous plant introduced from the West Indies, which appears to have found in Ceylon a soil and climate exactly suited to it.

It now covers thousands of acres with its dense masses of foliage, taking complete possession of land where cultivation has been neglected or abandoned, preventing the growth of any other plants, and even destroying small trees, the tops of which its subscandent stems are able to reach.