Foliar gas exchange and carbon (delta(13)C) and oxygen (delta(18)O) isotope ratios were measured in a young blackbutt (Eucalyptus pilularis Sm.) plantation subjected to four weed control treatments defined by the width of the weed-free strip maintained for the first 12 months after planting. Treatments were: 2-m-wide weed-free strip (50% of plot area, 2.0MWC), 1.5-m-wide weed-free strip (37.5% of plot area, 1.5MWC), 1-m-wide weed-free strip (25% of plot area, 1.0MWC) and no weed control (NWC). Our objectives were to determine (1) if decreasing the width of the weed control strip (decreasing herbicide use) affected growth and leaf photosynthesis of the plantation, and (2) the effects of the weed control regimes on variations in relative stomatal and biochemical limitations to photosynthesis. Trees in the 1.0MWC treatment had lower foliar light-saturated photosynthetic rate (A(sat)) than trees in the 2.0MWC treatment. An increase in metabolic limitation was responsible for the decrease in A(sat) in the 1.0MWC trees, which was also partly confirmed by the isotopic data. Compared with trees in the 1.0MWC, 1.5MWC and 2.0MWC treatments, A(sat) of NWC trees was significantly lower, a difference that was attributable mainly to stomatal limitation and to a lesser extent to biochemical limitation. The results support the conclusion that different weed control regimes cause differences in relative stomatal and biochemical limitations to plantation photosynthesis. This report contributes to a growing body of literature on competition for soil resources between trees and weeds. Our results highlight the usefulness of the stable isotopic method in supporting analysis of the response of net photosynthesis to varying intercellular CO(2) concentration for determining the relative stomatal and non-stomatal limitations to photosynthesis under experimental conditions in the field.