
Kudzu, the vine that never truly ate the South (2015) - softwaredoug
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/true-story-kudzu-vine-ate-south-180956325/
======
reportingsjr
There is a key bit in this article that isn't expanded upon. It's something I
only learned about after spending hundreds of hours controlling invasives and
talking to other people.

Plants that are considered noxious weeds and plants that are harmful to our
natural environment are pretty different things.

If you look at who has authority under the Federal Noxious Weed Act, you'll
see it is the department of agriculture. They really don't care about natural
areas much at all, they only care about how much agriculture you can get out
of a piece of land. If a plant impacts this, it is considered noxious.

A prime example of this is the USDA noxious weeds list for my state,
[https://plants.usda.gov/java/noxious?rptType=State&statefips...](https://plants.usda.gov/java/noxious?rptType=State&statefips=39)

It doesn't even include truly heinous invasives like Privet, japanese/amur
honeysuckle, or garlic mustard, but DOES include a couple of natives like
grape vines and butterweed!!

It's pretty disheartening, because a lot of people don't realize this and it
can cause some issues. I am friends with someone at a local nature center
where they remove butterweed due to it being considered a noxious weed even
though it is not at all invasive and is a native wildflower.

~~~
war1025
A thing I heard somewhere, I think on an episode of the Permaculture Podcast
[1], was to stop thinking of it as "invasive" plants. Plants aren't
"invading", they're filling a niche that is under-served. The way to keep
those plants from growing is to supplant them with other (potentially native)
plants filling the same niche, or modify the environment to fix whatever
deficiencies the unwanted plant is gaining it's advantage from.

They also tied it into the immigration debate, which I thought was
interesting. They mainly played off the fact that the same people who are pro-
immigration are often pro-native plants. Is it really the best idea to
eradicate species from regions, when we could just learn how to live together
more effectively?

I feel like I probably did a very poor job reiterating all of that. We've
really enjoyed listening to that podcast though.

[1]
[https://www.thepermaculturepodcast.com/](https://www.thepermaculturepodcast.com/)

~~~
jefflombardjr
In Beyond the War on Invasive Species By Tao Orion, the author gives facts and
numbers to back this up.

People are destroying native plant habitats, and creating the perfect
conditions for invasives. In fact 90+% of native species aren't threatened by
invasives. The invasives actually help heal the soil for native plants.

The author then asks, why then is there a war on invasives? And that's where
the book gets good imo.

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25782048-beyond-the-
war-...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25782048-beyond-the-war-on-
invasive-species)

~~~
briefcomment
Would you mind expanding on why there is a war on invasives?

~~~
mobilefriendly
Invasive plants displace native ones; in the mid-Atlantic where I live,
Chinese tree of heaven are everywhere. They crowd out walnut and other
hardwoods, they aren't as tall and attractive, and the wood isn't clean
burning. Our problem is also deer over-population-- the deer devastate the
native trees and bushes but not the invasives.

~~~
joecool1029
>Chinese tree of heaven are everywhere.

Ghetto palm also attracts the latest chinese hell:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotted_lanternfly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotted_lanternfly)

------
ntbloom
For those interested, check out the work of Doug Tallamy, an entemologist at
the University of Maryland. His basic thesis is that insects drive ecological
health and that invasive species that don't have thousands of years of
coevolution with native insect populations provide ecological dead zones that
are equivalant to concrete.

[http://www.bringingnaturehome.net](http://www.bringingnaturehome.net)

My opinion based on his work and others is that kudzu and others dramatically
reduce biodiversity and upsetting ecological balances that took thousands of
years to create. It's wonderful that pests show up to consume kudzu (like the
bug referenced in the article), but it's not the same as a native species
occupying the same niche that provides forage, pollen, seeds, habitat, and
other necessities that make native insect populations thrive, which in turn
supports larger fauna like birds, mammals, etc.

~~~
stryan
As a side note, he's at University of Delaware not University of Maryland.

~~~
ntbloom
Whoops, you're right. Thanks for catching it.

------
grawprog
I've seen the kudzu vine videos, but this article misses the point though it
does touch on it

>More important, it obscures the beauty of the South’s original landscape,
reducing its rich diversity to a simplistic metaphor.

The destruction of that 'rich diversity' is the problem. It's same way
Himalayan blackberries take over roadsides and provide monoculture ecosystems
in the northwest. That 'rich diversity creates canopy layers used by different
wildlife, bird and insect species. How many species were adapted to living in
the natural habitat there before those kudzu patches, while not as big as
sensationalism says, have overrun other natural species.

Introduced species that dominate the ecosystems they're introduced to cause
more problems then we can even understand because in many cases, the
historical data just doesn't exist and we're not even sure what was lost.

~~~
URSpider94
I think you are arguing a point that the author doesn’t make. It’s not that
kudzu isn’t invasive, nor that it doesn’t smother the landscape. The main
point of the article is that it doesn’t expand quickly beyond the disturbed
places where it was originally planted, like road cuts.

When I was a kid, we were told stories of kudzu growing feet per day, and of
people going away for a trip and coming home finding their house engulfed.
Southerners legitimately thought it would grow to engulf _everything_.
However, as the author points out, the giant fields of it that were there when
I was a kid, are still there today, and they aren’t much bigger than they were
then.

~~~
horsawlarway
It certainly adds to maintenance costs near where I live.

It swarms over sidewalks/power poles/lawns. The city has to come cut it back
every 3 to 4 weeks, and I consistently lose bike lane space to it.

Now - it was here when I moved in, so maybe in the absence of kudzu, something
else would be doing the same thing.

But it really does seem to love the spaces that we've cleared for use, and it
makes keeping them clear much harder.

One house that was flipped about a year ago borders a large patch of it. The
flippers put up a fence to block the hillside (sloping down away from the
house) and stop it coming into the yard. It's about 13 months later now, and
it's about to drag the fence down. I've seen the folks who moved in clear it
off the fence at least twice.

That said, you can go a mile over and struggle to find any, since the
soil/sunlight conditions are different.

I would hesitate to buy property with large swathes of it nearby, since it
truly is a nuisance. That said, areas we haven't cleared seem mostly free of
it. So more of a people problem, less of an ecological problem.

~~~
chiph
In the effort to find something the plant is actually useful for, a high
school classmate's science project was to see how much ethanol you could get
out of it. Turned out - not much.

But he did find that goats will eat it -- if there isn't anything tastier
around.

------
bwanab
I grew up in a southern town that was built out of whole cloth in the 40s (Oak
Ridge, TN). It wasn’t carefully done, and there were lots of issues with
erosion. Enter kudzu to the rescue. For a long time it appeared that the town
was going to be swallowed up by the stuff, but once the trees got tall enough,
it started fading away and now you have to look hard to find it.

------
eelround
I was researching this because I know of someone who suffers from acoholism,
"A Single Dose of Kudzu Extract Reduces Alcohol Consumption in a Binge
Drinking Paradigm"[1].

[1]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4510012/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4510012/)

------
learc83
I remember a few years ago when kudzu bugs first showed up. There were swarms
of them, and I remember for a few weeks I'd get them on me when walking from
the car to the front door.

Then the next year I thought they'd all vanished, until I looked at a kuzdu
vine and noticed it was covered in them. It's almost like they didn't know
where the kudzu was when they showed up, but now that they've found it that's
where they stay.

~~~
projektfu
I didn't know what they were but now I see that they're those little green
things that remind me of square ladybugs. I had one tag along on my bike ride
today.

------
samirillian
About 6 months ago I applied for a job at Chicago Botanic Gardens, which was
hiring on the basis of a 10 million dollar grant from the "Negaunee
Foundation." After doing a little digging, I discovered that the Foundation
was run by a Koch-type billionaire family. It cannot be a coincidence that the
majority of the money seemed to be earmarked for eliminating invasive species.
Literal NIMBYs

A contrapuntal perspective, which I haven't gotten around to reading yet, is
"Beyond Invasive Species" by Tao Orion. Not an expert, but I would imagine
that as in most things, the first rule of permaculture/ecology should be
"first do no harm."

[https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Richard_W._Colburn](https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Richard_W._Colburn)
[https://www.chicagobotanic.org/research](https://www.chicagobotanic.org/research)
[https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/beyond-the-war-on-
invas...](https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/beyond-the-war-on-invasive-
species/)

------
Xcelerate
> Conservation biologists are taking a closer look at the natural riches of
> the Southeastern United States, and they describe it as one of the world’s
> biodiversity hotspots, in many ways on par with tropical forests

I often hear that the southeastern U.S. has some of the highest biodiversity
of anywhere on earth, but as someone who grew up there, I'm not sure that it's
really that apparent, at least visually. The vegetation all the way from
Atlanta up to Maine tends to look like this
([https://static.rootsrated.com/image/upload/s--
nsRlDT5Y--/t_r...](https://static.rootsrated.com/image/upload/s--
nsRlDT5Y--/t_rr_large_traditional/l6gsrwwz7zojibuumx0v.jpg)). If you dropped
me in the woods in any state along the east coast, I wouldn't be able to
identify which state I was in. Perhaps there is diversity in the number of
species, but the trees and plants themselves don't look that different from
each other. I moved to the west coast two years ago, and at least in
appearances, it _seems_ like there is more biodiversity
([https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Od2CTO9JsJw/Wq7QDGEtQ6I/AAAAAAAAD...](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Od2CTO9JsJw/Wq7QDGEtQ6I/AAAAAAAADn8/yULxcPG6cwcB-
ACcC5dz2o-bXn04MgBUwCEwYBhgL/s1600/IMG_2898%2B%25282%2529.JPG)). Does anyone
know what might explain the discrepancy? Just north of SF, there are redwood
trees and cypress trees, which look strikingly different from each other.

Also, for those of you that grew up on the west coast, I'm curious what was
your subjective impression of the vegetation in the southeast the first time
you visited?

~~~
learc83
I think it’s just your perception. I can easily spot when a movie or TV show
was filmed in a North Georgia forest. And when driving from Atlanta 2 hours
west to Birmingham, 2 hours east to Augusta, or 2 hours south to Columbus you
can tell a huge difference in vegetation.

As for your pictures:

[https://explorebeaufortsc.com/wp-
content/uploads/2019/04/spa...](https://explorebeaufortsc.com/wp-
content/uploads/2019/04/spanishmoss.jpg)

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/51/Ph...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/51/Photo_of_the_Week_-
_Great_Dismal_Swamp_National_Wildlife_Refuge_%28VA%29_%284578425529%29.jpg/300px-
Photo_of_the_Week_-
_Great_Dismal_Swamp_National_Wildlife_Refuge_%28VA%29_%284578425529%29.jpg)

[https://www.gatlinburgtnguide.com/wp-
content/uploads/2016/09...](https://www.gatlinburgtnguide.com/wp-
content/uploads/2016/09/Fall-colors-in-the-Smoky-Mountains.jpg)

[https://natureconservancy-h.assetsadobe.com/is/image/content...](https://natureconservancy-h.assetsadobe.com/is/image/content/dam/tnc/nature/en/photos/tnc_86407773_4000x2200.jpg?crop=0,113,4272,2236&wid=1280&hei=670&scl=3.3375)

All in the Southeast.

~~~
projektfu
There's interesting variations, too. Most of Georgia seems to be a good place
to grow Slash Pine but near Savannah it also grows a pretty moss on the bark.

------
h2odragon
Kudzu is a bitch to fight, but areas where it grows best aren't good for much
else anyway. In my area the kudzu patches cover areas almost too rough for
goats to graze.

I hadn't known of the beetle mentioned in the article, but I've seen wild
grapevines beat kudzu in a couple places the past decade and wondered why.
Suspect that's the reason.

~~~
wavefunction
Are there places too rough for goats to graze? They're commonly climbing
almost vertical surfaces whether wild or domestic.

~~~
h2odragon
They can survive, and wild ones thrive, in places where a commercial goat farm
could not be made to operate. I have in mind a particular neighbor who _tried_
to run goats in an awful kudzu covered gorge on his land. The kudzu survived,
the goats didn't.

------
jasonbourne1901
I've spent maybe a hot minute in the south, and even I know the legend of the
dreaded kudzu. This article has destroyed a myth from my youth!

I'm sure the truth is somewhere in between, as invasive species always
displace something, even with moderate penetration.

------
wyxuan
spent more time than I'd like to admit watching kudzu videos on youtube, and
it seems like there are many fans of kudzu because of all the benefits of it:
kudzu jam, kudzu vine basketry, kudzu baked goods, etc.

------
dang
Discussed at the time:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10113294](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10113294)

------
egypturnash
I sure could use a few of the “Japanese kudzu bugs” mentioned in this article
to control the kudzu that I keep chopping back around my place in New Orleans.

------
jelliclesfarm
Kudzu is medicinal. I grow medicinal herbs in my farm and so I get to ‘hear
in’ what herbalists discuss amongst themselves.

Kudzu in combination with other herbs was considered for covid during early
times. I subscribe to homeopathy myself rather than herbalism and found
Byronia Alba a close substitute. Altho I use it as a prophylactic. (Not
medical advice. It’s just for my own constitution and supports my
constitutional remedy. Not falsifiable)

