this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2024
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Oddly satisfying
It's like wallpaper, but peelable.
Environmentally friendly peelable wallpaper
Wallpaper is peelable
Mrs. Doubtfire voice "Hellooo!"
Kudzu was the last bioweapons unit of the Union army in the US civil war. It never surrendered, it is still fighting the American South, and winning the guerilla war.
I wish it luck on the south.
-Californian
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I'll leave this here, as I'm particularly bothered by the weird megamyth of kudzu in the US, as is evidenced but the other comments.
English ivy is actually a generally bigger threat but it never gets any real attention.
I will concede that the image above is kudzu tho.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/true-story-kudzu-vine-ate-south-180956325/
Playing whack a mole with my neighbours ivy. Keeps popping up on my side of the fence. Fuck whoever brought it to Australia.
I'm playing whack a mole with my own ivy. Fuck the prior house owners for letting it get out of hand. I got all of it from the trees and the side of the house but it always grows back. I'm still finding sprouts from thick woody vines that have been there forever apparently. I tried removing it from the fence but realized very quickly that it's the only thing holding it together. 😒
And fuck the English for bringing it over (we both know it was them, even their plants are colonizers).
Same. I have a fence that's barely still standing now that I removed the ivy. I've been pulling it and spraying it for several years now. I know I'll never win, but I'm doing my best to keep it in check. The most painful part is when I go to garden centers and see it for sale. It makes me want to cry.
The most painful part is when I go to garden centers and see it for sale.
"Buy it for life!"
notlikethat.jpg
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What I don't get is why we don't eat kudzu.
IIRC a lot of it has at some point been sprayed with super toxic herbicide to try and kill it off.
Don't quote me on that though I'm just quoting a Wendigoon video from memory
It's difficult to eat your way through an invasive species. Himalayan Balsam is also edible but it's thriving in the UK.
In fact edibility is often the reason these things are so invasive, it's why American Signal crayfish are over in the UK.
Texas: Hold my beer.
https://www.chron.com/life/wildlife/article/lionfish-texas-gulf-19717247.php
(Also Texas: Have you tried hunting the kudzu from a helicopter using automatic weapons?)
I've seen someone collecting lionfish, basically using a litter picker and a bag.
Because Crake is saving it for some special project at Rejoov.
I hate (and am terrified) that I understood this reference. That series is horrifying.
Kudzu CONSUME
Nah it’s pretty intent on covering the whole of England too tbh. Good for the bees in September tho ☺️
Near rivers it has to contend with Himalayan Balsam, and the bees love that stuff too.
Yeah I quite like the ol’ Himalayan balsam to be honest - very popular with the bumble bees. Gets a bad rap in the uk because it’s supposedly ‘invasive’, but I take rather a dim view of that kind of talk to be sure.
They do destroy biodiversity but at least they are pretty and won't fuck you up like Giant Hogweed.
And you can eat it (as long as you don't eat too much in case you fuck your kidneys)
Aye, this is the problem with a lot of invasive edibles. Too few people are interested in foraging and usually you can only eat so much foraged stuff.
If everyone went out with tubs, bags and baskets on their days off and did a bit of foraging to make their diets a bit more varied and healthy then we might be able to make a dent in things like Himalayan Balsam and American Signal Crayfish. Realistically though we'd just have to limit foraging of easier to identify and prepare plants and fungi from easier to access areas.
Kudzu is Chinese arrowroot tho?
~~Science~~ uninformed memes
Apart from what others commented on these being two entirely different species, there might be other factors at play as well.
Lianas and vines are pretty common and very diverse, especially in tropical forests. They are usually found as part of the upper canopy and if there is a tree fall, they manage to fill this gap pretty quickly. The trees grow more slowly, but will manage to establish themselves eventually, filling up that gap. But if you cut down an entire forest, trees have a much harder time to establish themselves because the whole ground is just covered in these fast growing lianas or vines. There are studies that look at exactly that, how lianas inhibit forest regrowth.
So, how overgrown with lianas or vines a certain habitat is, is very much dependent on the disturbance of this habitat.
Verbascum thapsus in Europe (nice medicinal plant):
Verbascum thapsus in Hawaii (alien mutant invasion):
Why? Climate differences?
It doesn't have the same pests and diseases as in Europe to keep it in check.
Export them too?
Seems a bit unnecessary when you could just dress the ivy up like schoolkids and the yanks would wipe it out in a week
(Yes, we're going to keep making these jokes until yous apathetic cunts DO SOMETHING)
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Some, like the ivy aphid are already in North America, but I'm not sure how much of a dent it actually makes. There's great precedent for successful introduction of biocontrol agents for other invasive species. There's also great precedent for catastrophic failures(especially in instances where there's a native close relative of a target species), so it's definitely something that needs to be very carefully explored and not to be done haphazardly.
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