Kudzu revisted (off topic) Re: Today is your last chance to comment on new US plantimportregulations
Steve Marak (Wed, 21 Oct 2009 15:29:01 PDT)
I live in a kudzu area, though about at the northern limit (NW Arkansas),
and I'm sensitive to both sides of this argument.
I will say, however, that when I go out to look at wild plants, both here
and when visiting other states, the biggest threat to them - and one that
makes kudzu look like nothing - is habitat loss. A few big earth-movers
can wipe out more natives in a week than kudzu would in many years, and
since we live in a developing area, we see that happen now about once a
month. Some site where we used to look at a native plant ecosystem is
gone, replaced by leveled red dirt.
There is one site we monitored for years, as one of the few known
locations of Lilium superbum in Arkansas; it was an hour's drive from
anything, and about half a mile down a dirt road from a kudzu infestation
of probably 20 acres or so, and we always feared the kudzu would run down
the road (there were no intervening natural barries) and choke out the
lilies. 20 years later, the kudzu is the same size it was then, but the
lilies are gone - someone bought the land, brought in tractors and
bulldozers, cleared it, put a couple of double-wide trailers on part of it
and used the rest for pasture. (A bunch of Cypripedium orchids were also
wiped out.)
Even in the areas where our state fish and game commission deliberately
planted Lonicera japonica for deer browse (and I do hate the stuff), the
natives in general seem to persist just fine, until someone cuts the
timber. I can't and wouldn't try to speak for every location, and I know
there are places where an exotic plant does actively choke out natives,
but when I started looking for examples of it around me personally, I
didn't find many. But I did see a lot of loss to land development.
(Aaron, I took some flowering stems of kudzu to the August meeting of a
local gardening group. They were fascinated by the grape fragrance, but
only 2 of about 50 realized it was kudzu.)
Steve
On Wed, 21 Oct 2009, aaron floden wrote:
Kudzu was not introduced by Fairchild. It was introduced for fragrance
in 1876, and likely even before that. It was not until it was widely
planted as a make-work program that it began to spread. But, following
private property rights, it should be the introducers responsibility to
remove an invasive from their own and others property. Fairchild was
insightful enough to do it on his own before it became a major problem
for him, something very few of our government officials have.
Kudzu has been found to moderate blood glucose levels, aid in the
metabolization of fat deposits when consumed and many more uses. It is
also edible par-boiled and cooked with butter like spinach.
--- On Thu, 10/22/09, Ellen Hornig <hornig@earthlink.net> wroteRecently I reread David Fairchild's _The World Was My Garden_ (the truly
magical autobiography of one of the great masterminds of US plant
introduction), and was amazed to find that he grew kudzu on his own property
and then struggled to get rid of it *before* the Soil Conservation Service
started planting it widely to control erosion (Fairchild, p. 328). This
suggests two things to me: first, a private individual (collector) could in
fact be responsible for introducing a pest (Fairchild, realizing his
mistake, paid "over two hundred dollars", somewhere between 1900-1905, I
believe, to get rid of it, but not everyone would make a comparable
investment); second, information does not always travel far and widely
enough, because Fairchild was apparently not aware of the Soil Conservation
Service's efforts until he saw them written up in a bulletin. There is
nothing in his book to suggest he tried to interfere or get them to
backtrack.
...
-- Steve Marak
-- samarak@gizmoworks.com