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

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: Kudzu, the vine that never ate the south (2015)

#31

Post by [deleted] »

_heimdall wrote: post #27
pvaldes wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Native species are part of the ecosystem. All coevolved in the same place for ten thousands of years at least, maybe millions, eventually creating a structure where each piece is connected with the other and fine tuned to produce the maximum value and extract the most products from our machine. "Non native species" is not the same term as "invasive". Lets imagine that the letter H in your black keyboard falls off. If…

Thanks for the details examples here! So would that mean the"when" for a non-native species to be considered native is on the scale of when it noticeably evolved to adapt to its new environment? > Invasive species would be like replacing all the keys in your keyboard with the letter H. They turn the machine basically useless. Instead to work with the ecosystem, they destroy it, eliminate most species, and replace it…

[deleted]

Re: Kudzu, the vine that never ate the south (2015)

#32

Post by local_crmdgeon »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #24
Nicholas_C wrote: post #2

>Still, along Southern roads, the blankets of untouched kudzu create famous spectacles. Bored children traveling rural highways insist their parents wake them when they near the green kudzu monsters stalking the roadside. “If you based it on what you saw on the road, you’d say, dang, this is everywhere,” said Nancy Loewenstein, an invasive plants specialist with Auburn University. This was my experience as a child. W…

We had a lot of it in Maryland. I moved to New York, about 30 years ago, and stopped seeing it. Until a couple of years ago. A house in our neighborhood had a backyard covered in it. Not sure if it was deliberately planted. I reported it to the DEC, and it seems to be gone, now.

I love the DEC so much. They seem to actually give a shit, and NY's environmental recovery is astounding.

A parallel to that is the incredible research and work done by SUNY ESF. They've almost brought back the American Chestnut!

Re: Kudzu, the vine that never ate the south (2015)

#34

Post by RunSet »

Conan_Kudo wrote: post #10
_heimdall wrote: post #4

The whole concept of "invasive species" had always been a bit confusing to me. When does a plant or animal brought here from overseas start being considered native? Kudzu has been growing in America since before my ancestors can't here, am I still considered invasive based on the history of Europeans invading this continent?

Yes. Certainly the First Nations have generally agreed on this.

Have the Zeroth Nations weighed in or did none of them survive the First Nations' arrival?

Re: Kudzu, the vine that never ate the south (2015)

#35

Post by blululu »

_heimdall wrote: post #4

The whole concept of "invasive species" had always been a bit confusing to me. When does a plant or animal brought here from overseas start being considered native? Kudzu has been growing in America since before my ancestors can't here, am I still considered invasive based on the history of Europeans invading this continent?

You know it’s not really a well defined concept. A friend recently pointed out that whitetail deer can be considered invasive in most of North America. While the Eastern woodlands are certainly their original habit, we have eliminated the wolves that would predate upon them. In the absence of predators their populations have exploded - sometimes causing serious ecological issues in the exact same way we see with invasive species which lack predators to keep them in check.

Re: Kudzu, the vine that never ate the south (2015)

#36

Post by courgette »

_heimdall wrote: post #27
pvaldes wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Native species are part of the ecosystem. All coevolved in the same place for ten thousands of years at least, maybe millions, eventually creating a structure where each piece is connected with the other and fine tuned to produce the maximum value and extract the most products from our machine. "Non native species" is not the same term as "invasive". Lets imagine that the letter H in your black keyboard falls off. If…

Thanks for the details examples here! So would that mean the"when" for a non-native species to be considered native is on the scale of when it noticeably evolved to adapt to its new environment? > Invasive species would be like replacing all the keys in your keyboard with the letter H. They turn the machine basically useless. Instead to work with the ecosystem, they destroy it, eliminate most species, and replace it…

Or it replace it with a handful character you don’t use in your language.

Often non native species are just sitting there. Not being leveraged by the ecosystem because it don’t know what to do with it.

Re: Kudzu, the vine that never ate the south (2015)

#37

Post by digitalsin »

As a teenager I once had a summer job as a land surveyor in North Carolina. We saw this stuff all over the place, acre after acre on many jobsites that were deep in the woods or very rural areas. I think this article is underestimating how much kudzu actually has taken over.

Re: Kudzu, the vine that never ate the south (2015)

#38

Post by courgette »

RunSet wrote: post #34
Conan_Kudo wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Certainly the First Nations have generally agreed on this.

Have the Zeroth Nations weighed in or did none of them survive the First Nations' arrival?

From a country freaking out about its borders a handful of centuries after completed the largest land grab in history…

Re: Kudzu, the vine that never ate the south (2015)

#39

Post by hnmullany »

Nicholas_C wrote: post #2

>Still, along Southern roads, the blankets of untouched kudzu create famous spectacles. Bored children traveling rural highways insist their parents wake them when they near the green kudzu monsters stalking the roadside. “If you based it on what you saw on the road, you’d say, dang, this is everywhere,” said Nancy Loewenstein, an invasive plants specialist with Auburn University. This was my experience as a child. W…

Kudzu does well at forest edges, so you tend to see it by roads - it's not successful in the interior where seedlings don't get enough light.

Re: Kudzu, the vine that never ate the south (2015)

#40

Post by l72 »

The first time I had ever heard of kudzu was when I first installed Linux (maybe redhat 5 around '98), and it's installer tool was called Kudzu. Red Hat being out of North Carolina also has a ton of kudzu.

It wasn't until several years later when I took a job that relocated me to Alabama that I saw it first hand on the roadways and really understood it.

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