Kudzu, the vine that never ate the South (2015) | Hacker News Reader

Kudzu, the vine that never ate the South (2015)

smithsonianmag.com

75 pointsNoRagrets79 comments

I grew up believing many of the myths that this article addresses. So I'm hesitant to believe it entirely without verifying additional sources. In particular, this quote seems misleading:

> the U.S. Forest Service reports that kudzu occupies, to some degree, about 227,000 acres of forestland

I quickly verified this statistic. But I know that "forestland" is a specific category of land. What about non-forestland? How many acres of kudzu are there on land that is not considered forestland?

> experts estimate that kudzu covers another 500,000 acres in the South’s cities and suburbs

I found this statistic about 500,000 acres quoted in several places, but didn't find which experts came up with that number. Still, it was very quick to find double the acreage in one specific type of non-forestland.

That doesn't even begin to touch non-forestland countryside (i.e. non-city, non-suburb)

The US Forest Service estimates that kudzu adds 2,500 acres each year. US Department of Agriculture estimates that it spreads by 150,000 acres per year. I don't think this is a discrepancy, just that each agency is looking at specific land types and uses.

It seems like this article is seriously cherry picking data to make it seem like kudzu is less of an issue.

Another thing is why is growth not exponential and is linear per year? That seems fishy as well.

Driving through dead forests covered in this vine on my way to PA from TX, I would respectfully disagree with their premise. When allowed to proliferate it strangled everything visible from the highway, and covered every inch of the hundreds of standing dead wood trees it had killed.

> everything visible from the highway,

But isn't this exactly what the article is arguing?

> As trees grew in the cleared lands near roadsides, kudzu rose with them. It appeared not to stop because there were no grazers to eat it back. But, in fact, it rarely penetrates deeply into a forest; it climbs well only in sunny areas on the forest edge and suffers in shade.

> Still, along Southern roads, the blankets of untouched kudzu create famous spectacles.

It's kind of ignoring the fact that as development proceeds, the ratio of "greenery within 100 yards of a road" to "forest" grows rapidly.

> And that, perhaps, is the real danger of kudzu. Our obsession with the vine hides the South. It veils more serious threats to the countryside, like suburban sprawl, or more destructive invasive plants such as the dense and aggressive cogon grass and the shrubby privet. More important, it obscures the beauty of the South’s original landscape, reducing its rich diversity to a simplistic metaphor.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm the only person that's read a given article... Though I guess I actually read it last time it was posted.

Following the comments on some other posts recently, I’ve concluded that a small proportion of people read past the headline before commenting.

Kudzu is an edge plant; it thrives in the boundaries between ecological zones. Where open land turns into forest you see it. Right there in the tangled thicket mass of bushes, shrubs, small trees and other vining plants. Deeper into the forest the canopy blocks more light and it opens up as the opportunistic, edge plants get shaded out.

Did it kill the trees, or did it proliferate after the trees died (and increased the direct sunlight reaching the ground)?

Kudzu does grow up and over live trees and kills them. It will also grow over abandoned buildings, or nearly anything really.

I have a constant battle with Kudzu every year. I wish we could find an easier way to kill the stuff, or transform it into something else.

That being said, goats will dig down and eat the hell out of the stuff.

It's edible if you want to go through the trouble. It's a variety of arrowroot which has a lot of uses in east asian food traditions. I like the tea.

Unless you get them very young, eating the leaves is reminiscent of chewing sandpaper. Now you have me wondering if it would be palatable juiced, maybe as part of a smoothie.

Yeah I've only ever eaten the young shoots. It was fine I never went out of my way to eat it again though.

And often used as a digestive aid/folk-medicine

Doesn't this just mean it will give you the shits?

No, it calms the digestive system, and used to stop diarrhea.

My recent most favourite quote is "Anything is edible at least once".

Doesn't Roundup control it effectively?

no, not at all

I have English ivy around my house, which isn't quite as invasive as kudzu, but still a major nuisance.

Roundup does basically nothing. The leaves are thick and waxy and so don't absorb herbicide effectively. Supposedly, applying a more concentrated formula on a weekly basis for a month can work, but I don't like the idea of spraying that much glyphosate.

If you have to use poison you can use way less by pruning and putting a dab of glyphosate on the stump. Even dishsoap straight to the vascular system will kill many plants.

My husband swears by painting the leaves with the herbicide. Time consuming, though.

This is the only way I was ever able to kill English ivy in the back yard of my old house. I bought glyphosate concentrate, some disposable plastic cups, and a disposable foam paintbrush. I painted it on every damned leaf in the yard.

It works. It may take several applications to do so, but it works.

Top tip. Rubber gloves with some woollen gloves over the top. Soak the woollen gloves in glyphosate and then you can lovingly stroke the plants you want to kill. It’s a bit quicker

That is a brilliant idea.

You can add penetrants to get it to work better with adding more glyphosate

You can use ammonium sulfate as a surfactant to cut through English ivy with glyphosate. It works great, and in theory you don't have to use as much Roundup that way either.

has anyone tried a 55 gal drum of kerosine. might be safer, just take care the flames arent always visible

Thanks ChatGPT, I’ll keep that in mind.

Burning the visible part would just make food for the roots.

I found that chlorine triflouride is more effective

I just mow it so I can see the vines and then pull them up and cut them. Over the course of the summer, I cleared a significant part of my land. Now that autumn weather has finally arrived, I should be able to get it all.

It wraps all around trees and other desirable plants, and has shoots under ground that can extend many feet away. Digging it up is the only solution but even that is exceedingly difficult. I’ve learned to live with it.

Doesn't that stuff kill bees and fireflies as well?

Yes. After generous application, all that will be left alive is your manicured Roundup Ready™ lawn. Bliss...

I understand your sentiment and share to some extent, but the reason this came into being wasn’t vanity. Having large shrubs or weed areas leads to pests and the spread of disease, while large trees become deadly during storms. In the AmericanSouth and MidWest, seasonal tornadoes make this latter threat far worse. Homeowners then become incentivized to clear their yards of both hazards. Kudzu and English Ivy kill the trees and make them more likely to come down. Once people clear a lawn, the only way to make it look good is by getting that rich green and uniform golf course like appearance brought to you by Bayer.

Communicate with your local beekeepers on when you do this and they’ll really appreciate it. Might even get some free honey.

As others have said, RoundUp / glyphosate doesn’t always handle these tougher plants. I’ve had good results with Crossbow: https://www.winfieldunited.com/products/herbicides/crossbow/...

Not sure if that is readily available in all regions, though.

Goats sounds like a good idea. And once they eat all the kudzu, you can eat the goats.

But would they taste good of all they've eaten is kudzu? Maybe they should feast on sage and rosemary.

Yes, kudzu is incredibly good forage and produces some of the tenderest, sweetest meat you'd ever taste.

humans can eat kudzu, too. It doesn't taste bad

Salt, mulch, barriers, and/or poisons like glyphosate.

Kudzu, the vine that never ate the south (2015) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35934578 - May 2023 (47 comments)

Kudzu, the vine that never truly ate the South (2015) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23668829 - June 2020 (40 comments)

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The Story of Kudzu, the Vine That Never Truly Ate the South - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10113294 - Aug 2015 (18 comments)

I used to live in Maryland, and saw Kudzu do some impressive work. Acres of land are covered by one patch.

I now live in New York, and it's starting to show up here.

Fun times ahead...

I think the point of the article is that Kudzu isn't really a threat and hasn't taken over nearly as much as people perceive.

I saw it do some impressive stuff. These articles pop up, from time to time, but you need to see it in action.

it's most likely you saw this from a road, where humans have disturbed the forest and introduced more sunlight, which is where kudzu thrives. not all land is visible from the road.

We used to play in it, when I was a kid, and that was before it really started to dominate. Back then, it was in fairly discrete patches, like what is heppening in New York, now.

At some time, in the last 30 years, it exploded.

would be curious to see some real data about this

Not really my department. I just have anectdata for you.

Numbers wise, sure, there are certainly more invasive species out there.

The trick with Kudzu is that, unlike ligustrum sinense, it invades in a much more literal sense, covering both other plants and the ground itself as far as it can. It 'universally' impedes the growth of other plants, and arguably makes terrain less traversal (if only because it covers what's underneath).

It may not be an ecological danger, but it can be a pain. Yes, other vines can grow as quickly, but most of them have smaller leaves and less propensity to carpet entire areas. I think the visual impact may make it feel more impactful and lend to its mythologization.

Plant some Japanese knotweed next to it and watch them fight to the death!

I think the knotweed will win.

If I'm not mistaken, you can't sell a house, in the UK, if there's knotweed on the property.

I'll put up the oriental bittersweet that is slowly taking over and pulling down all my trees as a contender in that fight.

A while ago someone posted an article about stacking and freezing farmed biomass. They wanted to sequester CO2 from whatever random stuff that could be farmed cheap and frozen in the winter by hosing it down and running pipes through it then opening or closing the pipes to make it either match the air temp or resist temperature change.

Large swaths of the south simply don't have winter. But how cold does it get and how far from wintery areas is it? Is trucking a bunch of kudzu an option?

Unless your truck is using a carbon-neutral power source, then no it's not an option. You'll emit more carbon than you sequester.

Trains might be an option, though.

Growing and sequestering enough biomass to slow down climate change means effectively running the fossil fuel industry at the same scale but in reverse. In that spirit, I'll point out that most efficient way of moving carbon-bearing solids per ton-mile is the bulk carrier ships we use for shipping coal.

I suspect some math is in order. A big truck can move a lot of carbon and I suspect there is some range within transport makes sense.

edit - To clarify if a big diesel truck puts X CO2 into the air to move Y tons of CO2 some distance then clearly if X is greater than Y it just doesn't make sense. But, if X is 10% of Y for 200 miles then moving biomass 200 miles might make sense.

Also the transport can be shrunk if the transport is electric. A diesel truck might dump less CO2 into the air than even a coal plant is dumping a ton of CO2 it might be dumping less (or more) per watt which might

Even ignoring that, dry wood is only around 50% carbon. I guess the soil mass is significantly more than that of the atmosphere, but I'd still want to fairly carefully verify we wouldn't be totally screwing something else up by also sequestering the other half of wood. Of course, we'd also have to decide where to place the new wooden mountain range.

What happens in summer?

This seems like an absurdly energy-intensive plan because you'd have to spend energy to maintain your mountain-sized pile .. which will heat itself up if it ever reaches warm enough to start decaying.

The most viable farm based approach would be "reverse coal mine": make charcoal from the biomass by reduced-oxygen combustion, then put it all in the big pit you made when you dug up all that coal.

However, there's no economic model for any of this, so carbon capture is never going to go beyond pilot schemes.

Have it grow on wire roap dangling over swamps,withdraw the netting end of season the greenery sinks to the bottom, zero energy effort.

Greenery at the bottom of a swamp would decomposes and emit methane instead of CO2, even worse!

turn the swamp slightly accidic to inhibit life

Wouldn’t the easiest way to be just have goats eat it and then collect and bury the poop?

Maybe, but the goats will turn a lot of the carbon sequestered in the biomass back into CO2. All animals do that to the carbon in the food they eat.

In my calculus class in high school, one of the problems in the set at the end of the chapter about the rate of the growth of kudzu. None of us had heard of it (including the teacher), which I guess might be due to being in New England rather than somewhere it's more of a problem. I think I remember us thinking it was some sort of crop rather than a weed, so we were all very surprised at the super high rate of growth it used in the problem.

It autodetected hardware well under a red hat...

Does higher CO2 make it grow faster?

Not likely in any appreciable way like the conspiracy theorists are putting forward.

I bet if you had lab controlled environments you could find some optimal level of CO2 for it to grow in if you could guarantee no pests or competitors. But those detractors will change with CO2 levels too. Also, beneficial things for the plant in question will change too, like other plants that fix soil nutrients and polinators. It is simply too complex of a question to truly know and tiny changes in a superficially positive direction could have wildly unexpected negative impacts from an unmodeled directions.

So... I don't know and I doubt anyone does unless they have studied the whole ecosystem for a long time.

A 30% change in my lifetime (https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/...) is neither a conspiracy theory nor tiny.

But you're right in the sense that this is utterly unprecedented in our history, so we don't rightfully know how the ecosystem will react as a whole.

Til that carbon dioxide making plants grow is a conspiracy theory , you should tell that to the farmers that pump it into their greenhouses

Alex Jones commonly tries to claim that raising atmospheric CO2 is unambiguously good because it increases plant growth. He then lies about solar, wind, and nuclear, while claiming coal and oil are harmless.

There are real pros and cons to all of these technologies, but the space of real climate discussion is so polluted by people lying about CO2 that it prudent to preempt any known conspiracy theories.

I would argue that is controlled conditions as I called out earlier. In the context the implication is wild plants. Yeah, absolutely some plants grow better in high CO2 environments but who has studied this and what were their results?

Ah, that clarified who you meant by the conspiracy theorists. My first reading was that you meant the "global warming conspiracy theorists" and their "tiny rise in CO2". I've heard rightwingers sincerely talk about those things.

Yeah, agreed.

“Wild plants” - riiight The answer, of course is that it does depend, and you still need nutrients and water and light to increase as the CO2 increases for all the cellular automata to ramp up together, also c3 vs c4 plants which are efficient at different temperatures , 25vs35c but in general, a warmer wetter world has more bio mass, see: rainforests. That isn’t to say that climate change is good since moving farmland is bad. Coastline loss is worse and creating fertile soil (eg in the north) takes thousands of years. Not to mention a billion people living in places that will become too hot for humans

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