{"id":9979,"date":"2015-08-29T21:35:44","date_gmt":"2015-08-30T01:35:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/?p=9979"},"modified":"2015-08-29T21:35:44","modified_gmt":"2015-08-30T01:35:44","slug":"the-true-story-of-kudzu-the-vine-that-never-truly-ate-the-south-smithsonian-magazine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/2015\/08\/the-true-story-of-kudzu-the-vine-that-never-truly-ate-the-south-smithsonian-magazine.html","title":{"rendered":"“The True Story of Kudzu, The Vine That Never Truly Ate the South”: Smithsonian Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

ruminates:<\/p>\n

\u2026The hype didn\u2019t come out of nowhere. Kudzu has appeared larger than life because it\u2019s most aggressive when planted along road cuts and railroad embankments\u2014habitats that became front and center in the age of the automobile. 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

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. \u201cIf you based it on what you saw on the road, you\u2019d say, dang, this is everywhere,\u201d said Nancy Loewenstein, an invasive plants specialist with Auburn University. Though \u201cnot terribly worried\u201d about the threat of kudzu, Loewenstein calls it \u201ca good poster child\u201d for the impact of invasive species precisely because it has been so visible to so many.<\/p>\n

It was an invasive that grew best in the landscape modern Southerners were most familiar with\u2014the roadsides framed in their car windows. It was conspicuous even at 65 miles per hour, reducing complex and indecipherable landscape details to one seemingly coherent mass. And because it looked as if it covered everything in sight, few people realized that the vine often fizzled out just behind that roadside screen of green.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

more<\/a><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ruminates: \u2026The hype didn\u2019t come out of nowhere. Kudzu has appeared larger than life because it\u2019s most aggressive when planted along road cuts and railroad embankments\u2014habitats that became front and center in the age of the automobile. As trees grew in the cleared lands near roadsides, kudzu rose with them. It appeared not to stop […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1071,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[101,510,526],"class_list":["post-9979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-america","tag-nature-red-in-tooth-and-claw","tag-old-times-there-are-not-forgotten"],"yoast_head":"\n"The True Story of Kudzu, The Vine That Never Truly Ate the South": Smithsonian Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"ruminates: ...The hype didn\u2019t come out of nowhere. 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