The Fijian island being strangled by vines | Hacker News Reader

The Fijian island being strangled by vines

theguardian.com

51 pointslermontov34 comments

I once owned a 1.5 acre property that had approximately 1.4 acres of English ivy on it. It was horrible; the ivy is, by all practical means, impossible to kill. An area covered with a tarp for two months looks exactly like an uncovered area. The only way to get rid of it was to pull the roots out of the ground, mostly by hand. And it grows new roots every meter or so.

If you want to get rich, invent a way to kill ivy that does not also kill people.

Goats don't take it out?

Apparently that works well. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/towson-univer...

Goats work. Where I am in Georgia (US) there's a local service where they bring temporary fencing and some goats and plop them in your property to chow down. Once you decide they're done, they pull them out. The operators have expert knowledge of local ordinances and permits and whatnot. They make good money and the goats have other economic uses. The only thing is you can't really tell the goats what to eat and not eat... so you may have to get creative with the fencing, which costs more.

Fun fact about goats: you know that 'goaty' taste of goat cheese and goat milk? That's from coagulated proteins - if the producer is gentle with handling the milk, avoiding agitation, and you consume it right away, you can make cheese and milk without that noticeable taste. This is really meaningful for small scale goatery because you can avoid the use of big heavy expensive dairy cows.

Industrial manufacturers are also figuring out ways to stop the coagulation while being able to agitate the fluid. (Convenient if you want to pipe it anywhere)

If you want to devote your life to goat business, come to Georgia! We have a top tier agricultural university, an affordable cost of living, and a strong local economy.

LOL -- actually considering this!

There are chemicals you can use, but you have to soak them into the roots. And the warnings on the bottles are scary as hell.

I think Japanese Knotweed is a tad worse to eradicate. The roots go deep: https://www.environetuk.com/japanese-knotweed/removal

I spray an extract from this plant on my plants, it’s a great antifungal. The product is called Regalia. This plant seems armed with everything it needs.

Would running some pigs in the area for a while help? They'd root it all up.

Pigs are the only thing I've seen that can hurt Japanese Knotweed.

Not to mention that handling it can lead to contact dermatitis.

Perhaps a use for those Boston Dynamics style dog-robots.

I'm not sure you are describing ivy which generally tries to parasitize other plants/trees and is quite slow growing. It will also climb up walls and spread.

I've never seen acres of the stuff. It is not a ground spreader type plant, ie it won't run across your lawn or field. It will run along fences and hedges but it does not run into open ground.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedera_helix is classified as a weed in the US and elsewhere quite rightly because it is non-native. It is not a fast spreader at all.

You can peel it off walls and pull roots relatively easily. You can simply cut it in several places and it will die off. You can also paint or spray the leaves with something nasty from Monsanto if killing everything is your bag but it isn't mine.

English ivy is a ground spreader, at least where I live. It won't grow on the ground if it gets a lot of sun, but ground shaded by trees will turn into a thick mat that is impossible to pull up. Some yards have it growing as a ground cover in the flower beds. You can't pull it off walls or the ground easily. It grows tendrils (roots?) into anything porous, which makes it extremely difficult to pull up. If it's growing on the ground, it's just a thick mat that is impossible to pull up. And while I wouldn't call it a fast spreader, if you ignore it for a couple of years, it will start to take over.

Source: I used to work for a yard company, and I have it in my own yard.

English ivy may be slow growing in your region but it is definitely an invasive, ground-spreading pest in other places. Where I live it's not uncommon at all to see large swaths of wooded parkland covered in it.

I live in SW England (ie quite warm n wet which is ideal for this stuff) and it really doesn't compare in the invasive stakes. We've just had a rather warm autumn and winter is a bit shag too and ivy is not close to the top of the weeds list at all.

Shallow roots means easy removal. Ivy isn't actually that pernicious either it seems. I own a company and on our land there are three whopping oaks and there is quite a lot of ivy:

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@50.9470006,-2.6381093,3a,75y,...

The above link shows a bewildering amount of tree and undergrowth but there are three really large oaks in there and I will preserve all of that lot. It's in a town and a loosely coupled island for a lot of wildlife - it's quite a bit larger than it looks. The oaks are around 200 to 250 years old judging by girth. There's also the remains of some Alms houses to the left of the view, roughly to the right of the pedestrian.

If you look closely there is a lot of ivy there! Also two of the oaks have a lot of ivy cover and I was worried that it might weaken them. But:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedera_helix

links to:

https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/trees-woods-and-wildlife/pl...

and we get the assertion: "but it doesn’t harm the tree at all". I'm not totally convinced but I do have access to experts on this (SSDC int al.) so I'll take their advice.

Kudzu... I've driven a lot in NC/SC (Eastern US) and it is truly amazing how many forests along those highways (small and big) are overrun with the stuff.

In Georgia, where weather conditions are optimal for kudzu nearly year round, it is an unstoppable menace. After society falls it will envelop everything we have built.

Haven't seen The Walking Dead, did they get that right?

And at least here in NC, where you have kudzu you have the seriously annoying kudzu bugs. If you’re wearing white they’ll hunt you down and if you squish them they’ll stain.

> While kudzu is certainly prevalent, it is vines from the morning glory family, especially merremia peltata, which are now wreaking havoc in Vanua Levu.

It looks scary from the road, but never extends very far, as it requires a lot of direct sunlight. Forrests proper certainly aren't overrun in the Carolinas by kudzu. That said it is invasive and a bit of a menace.

There is at least one horror film about it.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/ooshnu/2647762012

A high school classmate tried to ferment it as a science-fair project. The idea was to have a cheap source of alcohol for fuel (this was before ethanol production from corn became common). Nope. Didn't ferment for squat. He should have asked the local moonshiners before starting on the project - they would likely have already tried.

The only thing Kudzu is good for is feeding goats.

> While kudzu is certainly prevalent, it is vines from the morning glory family, especially merremia peltata, which are now wreaking havoc in Vanua Levu. Once this vine grows over the tree canopy, it can spread for miles devouring everything in its path.

Kudzu is a problem many places but it is also overexaggerated. There are plenty of contenders for the worst invasive plants.

Giant hogweed. That thing is scary, also known as Stalin's Revenge. It requires a protective suit to be worked with, impossible to eradicate, inedible.

Also merremia peltata is native to American Samoa, but has caused similar problems there since the early 90's cyclones hit.

I know it's a weed, but looks amazing. If one builds huge building scaffold with chain link fence, would it get enveloped to create grandios of Poison Ivy architecture? Kind of want to plop down the eiffel tower and see what happens.

Looks just like TN/SC/NC to me. I think we need more goats.

Can goats digest vines?

We had goats clear out all of our blackberry bushes. They also ate some shoes while they were at it. At that point, I realized the answer to "Can goats digest ..." is probably yes.

In this case, it again holds true: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNT9kv2q85A

1:06 for a before/after.

Growing up in Texas, we had a type of thorny briar we called “Goats head”, it was like natures caltrop. As the weed that produced it died (by human or drought), the goats head thorns remained attaching themselves to fur, clothing, or bare feet. Someone convinced my mother that a pair of goats would rid us of those weeds, thorns and all. The goats systematically ate _everything else_, including grass, hay, the bark off of trees, and even a wooden dog house. But they never ate the goat-heads.

Parts of Fiji get enormous amounts of rain.

The capital Suva always looks like it's being invaded by the jungle.

Suva gets 3,000 millimeters (120 inches) per year.

LOL - these vines are normal here in Fiji, nothing to do with climate change.

Mares eat oats and does eat oats And little lambs eat ivy A kid'll eat ivy too Wouldn't you?

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