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Kudzu, the vine that never ate the South (2015)
- anthk 2y agoIt autodetected hardware well under a red hat...
- dang 2y agoRelated: Kudzu, the vine that never ate the south (2015) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35934578 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23668829 - June 2020 (40 comments) The Secret Life of Kudzu - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20593633 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10113294 - Aug 2015 (18 comments)
- calebio 2y agoI 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 2y agoIt'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.
- ddfs123 2y agoMy recent most favourite quote is "Anything is edible at least once".
- dpflug 2y agoUnless 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 2y agoYeah I've only ever eaten the young shoots. It was fine I never went out of my way to eat it again though.
- NikkiA 2y agoAnd often used as a digestive aid/folk-medicine
- nemo44x 2y agoDoesn't Roundup control it effectively?
- greenie_beans 2y agono, not at all
- Sohcahtoa82 2y agoI 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 2y agoIf 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.
- susiecambria 2y agoMy husband swears by painting the leaves with the herbicide. Time consuming, though.
- devilbunny 2y agoThis 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.
- Angostura 2y agoTop 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
- SoftTalker 2y agoGoats sounds like a good idea. And once they eat all the kudzu, you can eat the goats.
- thfuran 2y agoBut would they taste good of all they've eaten is kudzu? Maybe they should feast on sage and rosemary.
- sweettea 2y agoYes, kudzu is incredibly good forage and produces some of the tenderest, sweetest meat you'd ever taste.
- Centigonal 2y agohumans can eat kudzu, too. It doesn't taste bad
- hi-v-rocknroll 2y agoSalt, mulch, barriers, and/or poisons like glyphosate.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y agoI 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 2y agoI 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 2y agoI saw it do some impressive stuff. These articles pop up, from time to time, but you need to see it in action.
- greenie_beans 2y agoit'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 2y agoWe 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.
- greenie_beans 2y agowould be curious to see some real data about this
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
- HPsquared 2y agoDoes higher CO2 make it grow faster?
- sqeaky 2y agoNot 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.
- kstrauser 2y agoA 30% change in my lifetime (https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide 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.
- idunnoman1222 2y agoTil that carbon dioxide making plants grow is a conspiracy theory , you should tell that to the farmers that pump it into their greenhouses
- sqeaky 2y agoAlex 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?
- saghm 2y agoIn 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 2y agoDriving 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 2y ago> 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 2y agoIt's kind of ignoring the fact that as development proceeds, the ratio of "greenery within 100 yards of a road" to "forest" grows rapidly.
- waveBidder 2y ago> 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.
- relistan 2y agoFollowing the comments on some other posts recently, I’ve concluded that a small proportion of people read past the headline before commenting.
- sqeaky 2y agoA 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?
- SoftTalker 2y agoUnless your truck is using a carbon-neutral power source, then no it's not an option. You'll emit more carbon than you sequester.
- christophilus 2y agoTrains might be an option, though.
- comicjk 2y agoGrowing 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.
- sqeaky 2y agoI 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
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- asynchronous13 2y agoI 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.
- mycall 2y agoAnother thing is why is growth not exponential and is linear per year? That seems fishy as well.
- bigbacaloa 2y ago[dead]