[HN Gopher] Kudzu, the vine that never ate the South (2015)
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Kudzu, the vine that never ate the South (2015)
Author : NoRagrets
Score : 29 points
Date : 2024-10-08 18:20 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.smithsonianmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.smithsonianmag.com)
| anthk wrote:
| It autodetected hardware well under a red hat...
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _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)
|
| _The Secret Life of Kudzu_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20593633 - Aug 2019 (9
| comments)
|
| _The Story of Kudzu, the Vine That Never Truly Ate the South_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10113294 - Aug 2015 (18
| comments)
| calebio wrote:
| 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.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| 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.
| dpflug wrote:
| 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.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Yeah I've only ever eaten the young shoots. It was fine I
| never went out of my way to eat it again though.
| NikkiA wrote:
| And often used as a digestive aid/folk-medicine
| nemo44x wrote:
| Doesn't Roundup control it effectively?
| greenie_beans wrote:
| no, not at all
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| 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.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| 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.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| 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...
| nemo44x wrote:
| 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.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I saw it do some impressive stuff. These articles pop up,
| from time to time, but you need to see it in action.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| 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.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| 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.
| NBJack wrote:
| 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).
| dpflug wrote:
| 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.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Does higher CO2 make it grow faster?
| saghm wrote:
| 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.
| jdhendrickson wrote:
| 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.
| waveBidder wrote:
| > 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.
| causality0 wrote:
| 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.
| dmonitor wrote:
| Did it kill the trees, or did it proliferate after the trees
| died (and increased the direct sunlight reaching the ground)?
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