

The Story of Kudzu, the Vine That Never Truly Ate the South - acdanger
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/true-story-kudzu-vine-ate-south-180956325/

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rdtsc
> The more I investigate, the more I recognize that kudzu’s place in the
> popular imagination reveals as much about the power of American mythmaking,
> and the distorted way we see the natural world, as it does about the vine’s
> threat to the countryside.

When I was fifteen I came to US. We were driving around in the South and I
remember being so fascinated by the Kudzu. I was saying how beautiful it is.
The Americans told me what it is and how it spreads uncontrollably and how it
is a not something beautiful but something horrible like a disease. Every time
I see it now, I remember that conversation and how quickly my perception
shifted due to it.

~~~
markdown
I felt the same way about the African Tulip (all the trees with orange flowers
in this photo taken in Fiji):

[http://i.imgur.com/1CZ0FZ6.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/1CZ0FZ6.jpg)

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chiph
Growing up in South Carolina, I had a classmate in high school that as part of
his summer science project, attempted to extract ethanol from Kudzu. The plant
was worthless even for that, as he couldn't get a drop out of it.

The fact that the local moonshiners weren't using it should have been a clue.

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Amezarak
Well. I live in the south and the government (and private property owners)
very aggressively spray and uproot kudzu. I always figured the slowed spread
had more to do with that.

It is remarkable how fast it grows - there's a certain spot here where you can
almost watch it grow up and over and on the powerlines in a very short span of
time, until it is sprayed back and does it all over again.

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freshyill
Here in Maryland (certainly not quite the South), it's conspicuous along the
DC Beltway. It has definitely gone from "hey, is that kudzu?" to "holy crap,
there's a lot of kudzu on the Beltway." Still, I've never seen it in one of
our densely forested parks, or anywhere else but along the highways.

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moron4hire
I'm not sure what you mean by "certainly not quite the South". Maryland is the
northernmost state of the South. The Mason-Dixon line, carving along the
borders of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware, is almost universally
considered the demarcation between the North and the South. There are still
several places in Maryland flying the Confederate Battle Flag. It's most
_certainly_ a part of the South.

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jacobwil
Maryland (at least around Baltimore and DC, in my experience) often feels like
a no-region's-land: many Southerners will claim it's the North and Northerners
will claim that it's the South. Maryland definitely feels like it's where the
lines blur.

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freshyill
Yeah, this is exactly what I meant. It's definitely straddling both the North
and the South. So much of the state and its culture are very un-South. You
won't find its deep blue politics on a large scale anywhere else below the
Mason-Dixon Line. The fact that it was founded explicitly as a Catholic colony
puts it at odds with most of the rest of the South. This resonates even today.

~~~
moron4hire
Louisiana is a Catholic state.

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flavor8
Relatedly, [http://harpers.org/archive/2015/09/weed-
whackers/](http://harpers.org/archive/2015/09/weed-whackers/) is a good read
about the overhyped dangers of "invasives".

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pvaldes
Classical acceptance stage. Very common with invasive alien species.

