4 ms·

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 t

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 6y ago
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 6y ago
  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.

horsawlarway 6y ago

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 6y ago
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.