Kudzu: The Vine That Just Won't Stop
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wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. There's Chuck, and Jerry's here too, and we're just hanging out in the South here on Stuff You Should Know. Yup. That's right. And today, everybody, we're going to be talking about something I've wanted to do an episode on for a little while, but I forgot about it. But now I'm keeping a better list.

And this was farmed out to Dave Ruse, who helped us with this one, about kudzu, which if you're from the United States, you probably know what it is. If you're from the American South, you definitely know what it is. But if you don't, it is a perennial vine that very much thrives in the American South. And it is known as the vine that ate the South because it is an invasive plant from Japan that has

Really, really, really thrived in the American South. Yeah, it's taken on monstrous proportions as far as legend and rumor and just how people walking around the South generally think about and talk about kudzu. Yeah. It's become kind of a part of Southern identity. It's a thing. For better or for worse.

But, yeah, we'll get into it because recent scholarship has found scholarship on kudzu. Yeah. Who'd have thought? Yeah. Has found like we actually don't think kudzu is nearly as prevalent as you guys say. Yeah. And, yeah, the South is just kind of ignoring that stuff for now. Yeah. Because it's ours. Yeah. Yeah.

But originally, like you said, it was Japan's and China's. I think it was actually, it's native to China. And its scientific name is Pueraria Montana, which makes it really confusing because it's not from Montana. Neither is Hannah. No. Turns out she's from Tennessee. Yeah, that's right. It is a part of the, oh boy, I always forget. And someone always tells us when it ends in C-E-A-E, what is it? C-E-A-E.

F-A-B-A-C-E-A-E family, which means it's a legume, just like a pea or a soybean. They are all nitrogen fixers, which we're going to get to in a little bit. I can't wait. But it's a good thing that it's a nitrogen fixer because it helps soil fertility.

And it's the kind of thing that can grow in the peak of summer when things are really hot and humid and rainy and steamy. It can grow a foot a day is what you usually hear, and I think that's probably confirmed, or about 40 to 60 feet through a growing season.

And because southern winters are not so harsh, they almost, you know, if you're a mature kudzu vine, you're going to live through that winter and just keep on growing. Yeah, and grow and grow and grow. And the way that they grow, they have hairs on them like poison ivy does, but it doesn't help them climb. Instead, the very ends, the very tippy tops of the kudzu vine is like long and thin tendrils.

And it will wrap those tendrils around anything it can possibly get its hands on. It loves fences. It loves guy wires that hold up telephone poles. Oh, yeah. It loves tree limbs. Anything that it can use to support itself, it will. And it just eventually overwhelms and takes over whatever it's attaching itself to, whether it's a barn, whether it's some poor unfortunate tree who's like, what did I do? Yeah.

It just spreads and covers everything. And that's one of the reasons, the way that it grows, is one of the reasons why the South is just like, see, kudzu, it's everywhere. It just takes over. It's going to kill us all one day. Yeah. Can't even see that billboard anymore. Nope.

Which is a shame because if you can't see a billboard, how is life worth living? I know. All right. So if you wonder, oh, yeah, but what about this nasty eroded soil that's just like barren? Nothing can grow there. Kudzu can grow there. Who's wondering that? Yeah. And the reason kudzu can grow there, one of the reasons is not because it just climbs so fast and grows so fast, but it has an energy store via this –

humongous taproot. A mature kudzu root can be like 12 feet long and weigh 400 pounds. And these things are underground. Just it's almost like the engine like lying beneath this vine. Yeah. Or the gas tank even, I guess. Sure. All right. One of the two, maybe both, maybe a gas tank engine in one. Yeah. Throw in the catalytic converter in your business. Yeah.

So one of the things about kudzu vines, one of the reasons they're so stable as far as once they start growing, they're hard to get rid of, is because every once in a while, I think every foot or so, when the vine touches the ground, it sends out roots. And it establishes what are called root crowns. And that's where it eventually grows from. Once the new root crown is established, it starts sending out more vines and more and more and more.

And when you have all these root crowns sending out vines, they become tangled, like a tangled mat, a thicket of kudzu vines that can be meters deep, essentially. Like you could get lost in one of these things. Yeah. Have you ever tried to get rid of kudzu for any reason? Not kudzu, but other pernicious vines, yes. Yeah.

Never tried my hand at kudzu. Sounds hard. Yeah, it's hard. But, you know, I think any pernicious vine is pretty tough. So you probably know what it tastes like, you know, but not literally. Although what a time to talk about that, because if you want to go back to kudzu's roots in China, literal roots did not even mean that. It has been a part of Chinese traditional Chinese medicine for a couple of thousand years. They call it ko or koshu.

And that root, they make root tea out of it. And in Japan, they eat this stuff. Like not only has it been used for medicine, but that root powder that they can make is used in a lot of different foods in Japan. Yeah, it's a thickener. So if you've had mochi, it's possible that they use kudzu powder, kudzu starch to make it the thick powder.

little delicious treat it is, or they'll use it to make noodles with. It's also used in traditional Japanese and Chinese medicine. They'll use tea for things like colds and digestion. And then also because there's actual like health benefits, or at least it contains flavonoids that have been shown to have health benefits.

they use it for things like inflammation, cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, to protect against those things, not to cure them or anything. Yeah. And while I mentioned that it's Koshu in China, it is Kuzu in Japan. And you might have heard various stories if you're in the South, you know, there's

It's not like we're sitting around talking about kudzu all the time. That's a bit of an outdated trope. But at some point, if you like literally were raised in here and lived here your whole life, you might have heard someone at some point say something about like how kudzu got here. And I remember hearing a story that was brought over as part of a like a World's Fair or something. And it had to have been this story from 1876 or.

when it was brought over from Japan on display at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. But that is a bit of a false rumor because they actually destroyed all of those plants. And that's not when kudzu literally took root here. No. And then within a few decades, the people who were at that exposition and saw it apparently fell in love with it. Kudzu display was a huge hit.

And so within a couple decades, you could order seeds, kudzu seeds, to plant at your house. It's so funny to think about now. Yeah. And people would plant it as an ornamental vine because it has purple flowers. They smell. It smells like grape candy and lavender. It can be pretty. I could see how old-timey, turn-of-the-century people were like, this is great. But even then, with people planting this stuff at their houses across the South, they

That still wasn't when kudzu invaded because they were mostly growing it upright on trellises, on porches, and kudzu is easily controlled in that situation. It's when it's on the ground as a ground cover that it spreads like crazy and is really hard to get rid of. Yeah, for sure. When it really came in earnest was in the 1930s, and it was very much purposeful. This was a time when the...

I guess Oklahoma and Kansas and other areas nearby were being killed by the Dust Bowl. In the Deep South, we didn't have the Dust Bowl, but we had a pretty bad agricultural scene after decades and decades of monoculture farming with corn, basically, tobacco and cotton.

And so we've talked about monocultures before and how that's not the best way to take care of your land. And eventually that soil is not going to be great. It's going to erode. It's going to be depleted of nutrients. And Kudzu was looked at by the Soil Erosion Service, which later became the Soil Conservation Service, as the answer in 1933.

Yeah, because, so first of all, it grows vigorously. Everybody knows that about kudzu. And it doesn't matter how terrible the soil is, it will grow in it.

And then as it's growing in it, you said that it's a nitrogen-fixing superstar, and it is. Nitrogen-fixing plants, all plants fix nitrogen. They bring sugars to their roots. They feed microbes that eat the sugars, and then the microbes convert nitrogen from the atmosphere into usable nitrogen that the plants then take up. So all plants have that relationship with microbes. It's just nitrogen-fixing plants are superstars.

are such powerhouses and have such thriving microbial communities that they put out way more nitrogen into the soil than they use themselves. So as they grow, they restore the soil with nutrients that have been depleted. And that's what kudzu was initially used for. Yeah. So they were like, hey, this stuff's great. It'll slow your erosion. You're going to fix that soil so good. It's going to get fixed up.

And they said, here's what we're going to do. We're going to create a government program because those always work out great. And we're going to encourage people to grow these things. They had millions of kudzu seeds brought in, and they grew those into little seedling plants. And they paid farmers in the south $8 an acre to plant kudzu.

kudzu, and by the mid-1940s, there were about 3 million acres of purposefully planted kudzu growing on southern farms. That's on the farms. You also had the Civilian Conservation Corps, which was an FDR program with the New Deal,

When we talked about it before, when they were like, hey, if you're unemployed, come work for the Civilian Conservation Corps and, you know, we'll put you to work doing things like this. Like, hey, just go plant anywhere along the roadway where you see a washed out gully or if we're clearing out land for roadways and it's just a barren, dirty mess, like plant this kudzu and you'll be doing America a favor.

Same with the railroads. Like you don't want the bed that your railroad's built on to wash out. So if you plant kudzu on every side, it'll keep it from eroding.

Plus, it looks prettier than a bunch of gravel, right? So, yeah, this stuff started getting planted everywhere. And in addition to the government saying, you guys want to plant this? Go ahead. We'll pay you. There were some evangelists. Evangelist is like the best word to describe them. And one, the guy who's probably most prominently cited as a kudzu evangelist is a guy named Channing Cope. Yeah. Maybe we should take a break and cliffhanger that one.

Let's hang it. Everyone's like, who the heck is Channing Cope? Got to know. I got to know, guys. You're going to have to wait. All right. We'll be right back. We'll be right back.

Welcome to Growing Up, the Lingokids podcast where we uncover all the awesome jobs you can do when you grow up. I'm Emily, and I'm here to help you find your passion. Oh, wait a second. This noise. Ah, that's Winston, who always has some burning questions. What is it now, pal? Hey, Emily. Can race car drivers go faster than jet planes? Typical. He's a charmer, but sometimes his timing could use some work.

Winston's all about trucks, but hey, we'll explore construction, car racing, and plenty more careers. So join us on Growing Up, where we inspire you to be whatever you want to be. Lingo Kids Growing Up is now available on StoryButton, the kid-friendly device for screenless podcast listening. Listen to Growing Up on StoryButton, the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

So, Chuck, you really messed with everyone's mind. I'm going to fulfill their wishes and tell them that Channing Cope was a farm editor for the Atlantic Constitution newspaper. Farm editor? What's that?

So it was a guy who would edit farms, and then the paper would take pictures of him editing the farm, and they would publish it. That was, from what I understand, what the farm editor did back in newspaper times. Oh, okay.

And this is the 1940s. And this guy was a really from what I could tell, I didn't do any deep research on him, but he seems to have been a very at least outwardly likable fellow. Yeah. He had a huge jovial personality. He was super homespun. He had a radio show in addition to his column, Channing Cope's Almanac.

And it was really popular. He would just riff. He'd broadcast live from his front porch, and it was unprepared, and he would fill a half hour or an hour just talking about farm stuff, and people loved it. But in his column and on the radio show, he would invariably talk about how amazing Kudze was. Yeah. He said that and reform. We need some reform in our government. Right. So...

He's doing this radio show. He's beating the drum for kudzu Basically saying everything that we've been saying which is like hey, it's gonna rebuild your soil your cattle can graze on it You just rotate that cattle around your fields and they're gonna be so full from kudzu and so happy And that kudzu is gonna grow back so fast and they're gonna have so much more food and you're just gonna be sitting pretty basically he actually started a kudzu Club of America which had eventually 20,000 members and

And said, this is what's going to bring the South back, basically, is kudzu. And about, oh, what, less than 20 years later, actually about 10 years later, Southern farmers were like, we're in big trouble here because the cattle are eating this stuff. And if they eat too much of those leaves, they're dying off because they're not matured yet. The vines are, not the cattle. Yeah.

They're not mature cattle. They can't handle it. And if they try to cut it back or something because it's, you know, starting to invade other parts of their farm and like bail it up like, hey, like, I don't think I don't know if we're getting through what a twisted mess this stuff is. Like it'll wrap itself around any machinery you have and just make a fool of modern machinery.

Yeah, just, I mean, if you aren't familiar, just look up kudzu and abandoned houses or something like that, and it will just immediately deliver the impression you need on what it can do and how much it can take over. And so you had a bunch of farmers in the 50s who'd planted this stuff on purpose, and stories are starting to come out like these guys, like,

Their farms are just being overrun. Not only is it getting out of their fields, it's starting to climb up their house, the farmhouse. Their tractor, if they leave it sitting for more than half an hour, it'll get eaten up by the kudzu. This is when the kudzu legend really started to take off. And again, it was based in a very real fact that kudzu had gotten out of hand and everyone had a problem. But it also was...

the rural southerners who were talking about this. So it was immediately spun into yarns left and right basically. Yeah. I mean, if it got into the forest, the timber industry was affected. So it was genuinely causing problems. Then starting in 1953,

over the next about 40-ish years, the government just kind of one at a time started saying things about kudzu. Like initially in 53, the USDA said, it's not an improved cover crop. And then nine years later in 62, the Soil Conservation Service said, you know what? You don't even plant this stuff unless it's in a really remote location. 1970 comes along and they say, all right, we're going to go ahead and call a weed a weed. And this is a weed.

And then finally in 97, they said, that's not even good enough. It is on the federal noxious weed list. Yeah. It joined the sorry likes of goat's rue, velvet finger grass, giant hogweed, maidenhair creeper, turkey berry. Turkey berry. Tropical soda apple. That's just like three words strung together. That's actually delicious.

It sounds like it, but it's a noxious weed as far as the USDA is concerned. With a little gin and ice, though? It does sound pretty good. Yeah.

So one of the big problems is not just that, like, farmers were having trouble with this. Eventually they figured this out. They stopped planting it. They were able to kill it off after, you know, some years of difficulty. And it mainly got left to abandoned areas, those railroad tracks along the edges of highways, like the forests along the edge of a highway. Yeah.

That's basically where kudzu was left to just kind of go crazy. And that's not really great either because during the last glacial maximum in North America, the ice sheets came down and stopped just above Georgia, just above Tennessee, just above the south. Let's just call it that. And a lot of animals migrated southward and stopped where the ice sheets stopped.

and stayed after the ice sheet retreated. And as a result, the South has one of the most biodiverse ecosystems in North America. And when you add something like an invasive plant species, it affects all of that. So it actually is a big deal that kudzu is so pernicious and so fast-spreading because it does affect that biodiversity and reduces it tremendously.

Well, yeah. And you were talking about it being a nitrogen fixer, which is a good thing when you need your nitrogen fixed. The problem is, is there was so much kudzu, I think more acreage in the south than even soybeans. So more than any other legume, which are the other nitrogen fixers is the point. It can actually disrupt. It can fix so much nitrogen that can disrupt the normal production.

nitrogen cycle, because when excess nitrogen comes back into the atmosphere, it comes back as two things, nitric oxide and nitrogen dioxide. And these are pollutants. So if you have an abundance of kudzu, eventually you're going to have an abundance of lung inflammation and asthma. It's just it's not good for the air.

So I looked into that and I could find articles on one 2010 study and they were all around the same time and no follow-up whatsoever. And the most recent study I could find was from 2023 and

And it said essentially the opposite, that Japanese kudzu growing along roadways actually traps a lot of the car emissions on that road in its dense vegetation and prevents air pollution in some ways.

Well, it's probably both. Yeah, it's possible the 2010 study was right. It's possible the 2023 study was right. They're not mutually exclusive necessarily, but I didn't see any follow-up whatsoever on that 2010 study. And herein, we have one of the big problems with talking about kudzu. People just say stuff about it, and no one says—

Are you sure about that? That doesn't sound quite right. Or where did you get that fact from? You know, like it's just that's how the South talks about kudzu because it's in some really strange way, very proud that it has this strange, unique problem that nowhere else in the world has. So I don't think the South really wants to know that kudzu is not as big of a problem as it's been saying all these decades, you know?

Yeah, because then we wouldn't be able to walk around and talk about kudzu to people that could care less. Yeah. And we wouldn't be able to wear those shirts that are dyed green from kudzu very proudly outside of the South at like family reunions. And they say, ask me about my kudzu dyed shirt. Oh, is that a thing?

Not that part, but yes, the dying a shirt green with kudzu to kind of show your southern bona fides. Never heard of that. That's super 90s. They also sold one that was a horrible color orange. It was dyed with red Georgia clay. Uh-huh.

These are not things that anybody should have been wearing, but it kind of goes to show, like, these are the weird things that Southerners take some sort of pride in. Yeah. And when I was a kid, I remember seeing the, and probably in some parts of Georgia, they still have these shirts and bumper stickers. Lee surrendered, Robert E. Lee. Lee surrendered. I did not. I'm so not surprised. It never occurred to me as a kid. I was like, well, what are they saying? Like, are they still fighting the Civil War? Mm-hmm.

Like they didn't surrender? I saw a check once from a guy. This is not a joke. And he wasn't, this wasn't ironic. His address said, for the state, the occupied state of Georgia. This was in the 21st century. Who's it occupied by? The Yankees? Yankees, yeah. The union, the federal government. Oh, boy. I'm not kidding. And he was serious about it, too.

So a couple of other problems with kudzu is money. Utility companies spend, literally spend hundreds of millions of dollars annually, hundreds of millions of bucks trying to keep kudzu from overtaking their utility systems. The highway doesn't spend quite as much, but they spend millions of bucks trying to kill kudzu along the highways. And then there's the matter of the kudzu bug, which is a...

A stink bug is Japanese, first spotted here in 2009. They're good in one way because they eat the kudzu and they can kill a mature kudzu stand in two or three years sometimes. But they are invasive. They are stink bugs and they eat other things and they're stink bugs.

Yeah, and you can't really say stink bugs enough. They are stinky, and that oil will stain your clothes. And when it gets cold out, they like to go into the warmth of your house, and sometimes they'll just stay even after it gets warm outside again. Yeah. It's not something you want. And they're fairly new. They showed up, they think one of them or some of them hitched a flight or hitched a ride on some flight back in the early 2000s, and they were first described in 2009 in the South.

And at first people were like, this is awesome. They're going to get rid of the kudzu and then...

Somebody smelled one of them and was like, oh, no. Still, again, something else. Yeah, I see stink bugs around our house, but I don't think they're kudzu bugs. These look like an overfed tick in a lot of ways. Same color, same shape and size. Yeah. You could see very easily mistaking it for a huge tick. Yeah, totally. A blood-engorged tick. Yeah. Those are the worst. Yeah.

Should we take another break? Yeah, let's. All right. We'll take a break and we'll talk a little bit about what Josh is talking about. Is kudzu overblown? Right after this. Welcome to Growing Up, the Lingo Kids podcast where we uncover all the awesome jobs you can do when you grow up. I'm Emily and I'm here to help you find your passion. Oh, wait a second. This noise.

Ah, that's Winston who always has some burning questions. What is it now, pal? Hey, Emily. Can race car drivers go faster than jet planes? Typical. He's a charmer, but sometimes his timing could use some work.

Winston's all about trucks, but hey, we'll explore construction, car racing, and plenty more careers. So join us on Growing Up, where we inspire you to be whatever you want to be. Lingo Kids Growing Up is now available on Story Button, the kid-friendly device for screenless podcast listening. Listen to Growing Up on Story Button, the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right. If you have are not from the south and you've like road trip to the south or something and you've heard of kudzu and you're driving along the interstate and you see the kudzu that is just, you know, swallowed up a kudzu.

billboard or a telephone line or something. Yeah. And you just think to yourself, the poor, poor South, what did it ever do to anybody?

I know, but if you drive around, you might think, oh, my God, that stuff really is everywhere. One of the reasons you're seeing it a lot there is because it really thrives along interstates and stuff, these like big wide open areas where they can get plenty of sun and stuff like that. So it's not like because you're driving down the highway and you see a ton of, you know, something eating up an exit sign that is just like that everywhere. And like you said, there's a lot of sort of hinky stats around how much kudzu there actually is, right?

Yeah, for sure. I think in the 90s, a very frequently cited statistic was that kudzu covered 7 million acres of the south. That is an enormous amount of land. But I was reading a Smithsonian article by a naturalist named Bill Finch, and he said that it seems that those stats came from a garden club guide, a kudzu craft book, and a culinary and healing guide. Yeah, there you have it. And that...

Like just like with everything else with kudzu, the academic community cited that statistic without any incredulity at all. And that just spread like kudzu, essentially. Yeah, I think more reasonable stats. The U.S. Forest Service says that they they're about 227,000 acres total.

Yeah.

So, like you said, one of the reasons why kudzu seems to be taking over everything is just where it grows. So I think, Chuck, that would be selection bias. Yeah. So, yeah, if you just it's where you are. But if you were in the forest, you'd be like, oh, this is this is fine. I mean, eventually the kudzu would eat through a forest, I guess, because it's eating the outside part.

and killing off the trees, and then it would need the next stand of trees to grow on. But I don't see anywhere that that's a huge problem. It seems that it's just not as big an issue as anybody says, that it's really not a huge problem. Yeah, apparently in Alabama, there's way more, if you're talking about invasive species, there's way more Chinese privet. And have you had a problem with that?

Dude, have you ever had a Chinese privet problem? I definitely haven't, but I'm now looking it up to see if I even recognize it. A lot of people just treat them like shrubs because they're just so prevalent and they're not exactly bad looking, but if you don't want them there, they're a problem. They're hard to get rid of and they're sturdy. They grow really thick. Interesting. I like the white flowers. Yeah. Like I said, some people are just like, whatever. I have this shrub that I didn't ask for, but now I'm just going to keep it. Yeah.

Japanese honeysuckle is the other one. And Alabama, at least, is like way, way more. I think honeysuckle is about 3 million acres. Chinese privet is about a million acres. And kudzu in Alabama is only about 60,000 acres in the forest. Yeah. So in the United States, I think you said 227,000 acres of forest land, right? But that's just counting the forest land? Yeah.

So we don't really know how much kudzu there is. But again, now the most recent scholarship, people actually looking into it don't seem to be particularly worried about the whole thing. But if you have kudzu in your yard, there's actually some things that you can do to get rid of it if you want to get rid of it. And you probably do if it's anywhere near your yard because it will eventually become a problem if it's not already. Yeah, we have a kudzu issue at the –

the East Lake Garden that Emily operates. There's a sort of an island of kudzu and it's almost like a swale, like a depression where there's like trees and shrubs and stuff and the kudzu is only in there. And I think we have both decided that trying to eradicate it from there is like not even worth the time. Yeah. But we're trying to keep it there and not let it creep. So, so far so good.

with that kudzu, but I have English ivy that I purposely grew along one of my yard fences, my privacy fence, and it looks great. It's like Wrigley Field out there, and I'm so proud of it, but it is stacking up so high on this fence. I know that's not good for the fence because it's been, you know, I used to manage it a lot better, and now it's been a couple of years, and it's also a mosquito haven, I think. Yeah, and it locks in moisture in that, you

you know, behind it, which is where the fence is. So if it's a wood fence, it'll eventually rot it faster. Yeah. It can also, it can also take over trees too. English ivy can be a problem in the South as well. Yeah. You cut those at the bottom of the tree and, uh,

Watch them die. Yeah, so there's a there's an extra step that I found I don't know the vines that I was dealing with but they are serious vines and they're hard to get rid of but I have found one of the methods of killing kudzu also works for Say like IV or these vines that I'm working with which is you cut the thing off like a you find a thick Like part of the kudzu vine nice and mature and

cut it off very close to the ground, and then you paint it with the herbicide, like using one of those cheap wooden disposable brushes. And the herbicide I've found works really well is Crossbow. It's a Southern Ag product. And you just paint it on, let it dry, paint on another coat, let it dry, maybe do three times. It will work. It will kill that vine or that weed or whatever it is you're trying to kill.

Pretty quick, and it's not going to come back. Last time I painted on crossbow in the woods behind my yard, it was probably two, three years ago, and the stuff that I killed has not grown back. Yeah, it doesn't. I don't know if you can tell this or not, but I'm kind of proud of that one. You should be. You killed it. I killed it dead, and then I ate its babies.

Oh, my God. By the way, if you want to, Emily started an Instagram page for that garden that I mentioned before. It is east underscore lake underscore garden. If you want to learn a little bit more about the story of her garden,

cultivating and sponsorship of this nice little piece of land right here in the middle of town. Very nice. But if you want to keep talking about killing kudzu, you know what? I'll get her to put a picture of the kudzu up. Oh, yeah. You definitely should. But one thing you can do if it's on the ground, if it's not growing up things yet, is you can just mow the heck out of it.

Because, you know, like the cows eating those leaves could kill a not quite mature vine. If you cut those leaves off, it's eventually going to die. If it's like super, super mature, it's going to be a lot harder. But you just got to keep getting in there and keep mowing low and just mowing it down. And maybe it'll take a year or two, but that will also take care of it. Yeah, for sure.

You can also dig up the roots. Remember those root crowns that grow? It's going to be a pain, but luckily you just need to dig up the root crowns, which are fairly shallow. You can leave those giant 400-pound tubers behind because they're an energy store. They're not necessarily what it's growing from. So if you get rid of the crowns, that tuber will eventually die off too. And it's a pretty good way. From what I can tell, it's a—

Very effective way to get rid of your kudzu immediately is digging up the root crowns if you are dedicated and dig them all up. Yeah. Or if you want to really go next level, dig up that root and use that thing. You can. I don't know why this bothers me, but I find this really bothersome for some reason. That people would use this plant for good things? Yeah, I guess so. In the South in particular. Oh, okay.

I mean, is there any reasoning behind it? No. Like I said, I can't put my finger on it. It's something about it bothers me. It's...

I just don't understand why, but the idea of chefs like employing kudzu and southern, you know, new southern cuisine or making crafts out of kudzu, I don't know why, but I just, it bothers me. And it doesn't matter. Like, go ahead and do whatever you want. But me personally, I'm going to think about it, and maybe one of these days I'll figure it out, but it bothers me. Okay. Okay.

Well, I love it. I think it's great. I think if that stuff is there, like sort of with the foraging that's so popular these days, just going out and using what's in the earth to put on your plate.

I think it's a great thing. And there are Southern chefs getting into that, like you mentioned. There's a lot of, you know, like you said, weird pride around it. There have been poems written about kudzu by very prominent poets. It's been, you know, mentioned in countless books and movies. It was if you're a we have to mention the R.E.M. Murmur album cover.

If you're a music fan and you're from the South, you're probably super into the fact that the Murmur album cover is one of those train trestles completely eaten up by kudzu. And the fun little story about that is, is that thing had gotten so, you know,

sort of rotted out I guess after years and years of the kudzu eating it mm-hmm it was tried to be saved a bunch of times there were efforts over the years finally in 2020 they were like and this is you know outside of Athens they said we're gonna have to take this thing down so they did but

cherry on top of this story, or I guess silver lining rather. It is now part of the Firefly Trail, a very popular outdoor hiking and walking trail. And they built a replica of the train trestle that you can now walk over as a bridge that opened just last year in 2023. So it's back again. Great.

But the kudzu's gone. Yeah, not covering kudzu, though. But people make, you know, their pilgrimage, another R.E.M. insider joke, to look and get their picture taken. Or in the South, you'll get your picture made where that train trestle is. And then what was, while you're there, you also want to go to...

What was the soul food restaurant that just said automatic for the people was like their slogan? Weaver D's. That's right. I lived right behind there for a year. Man, it's so good. Yeah, go there. Go to Weaver D's and then the church steeple where Ariane played their very first show. They tore down the church, but they left that steeple. It's now a historical monument. Yep. If you open it up, you let out the people too. Right. That's true. Yeah.

I feel like we need to close with a poem as we normally do close Stuff You Should Know episodes. Hey, please read it. This is a poem by James Dickey, who was a poet but also a novelist. He wrote Deliverance. That's right. And in 1963, this poem was published in The New Yorker. It's called Kudzu.

Japan invades. Far eastern vines run from the clay banks they are supposed to keep from eroding. Up telephone poles which rear half out of leafage as though they would shriek like things smothered by their own green, mindless, unkillable ghosts. In Georgia, the legend says that you must close your windows at night to keep it out of the house. Dot, dot, dot. Yeah.

It's a good poem. And I read it like amazingly. Yeah, maybe we should get Jerry to add some like, you know, like a stand-up bass and a snare brush. Yeah, you should have been like this when I finished. Yeah. Okay. Maybe Jerry will. Let's find out. Yeah. Or maybe she can just sample me doing that and just loop it. There you go. That's a great idea. That's an even better idea. All right. Well, we are done with Kudzu, right? That means it's time for Listener Mail.

I'm going to call this Brooklyn Nine-Nine follow-up. Hey, guys. I was listening to the Tom Slick episode, and you guys were talking about Andy Samberg and tangentially Adam Sandler, and Josh said that he had never been, or maybe it was me, actually. He said he had never been in Brooklyn Nine-Nine as far as I was aware. Actually, he had a cameo in one episode that was quite funny, and I've included a link to enjoy, which I'm going to watch. I also want to say thanks for the insane amount of entertainment.

And that is from Victor.

And I'm going to check out that clip. You can go on YouTube and probably just type in Adam Sandler, Brooklyn Nine-Nine if you want to see the clip. Very nice. Thanks a lot, Victor. Much appreciated. Thanks for the link and for all the kind words. And if you want to be like Victor and get in touch with us, you can send us an email too. Send it to stuffpodcast at iheartradio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Hey, I'm Emily, revealing incredible jobs that are out there. Ah, here's Winston with his burning question. Emily, can race cars top jet planes? I gotta know. Classic. He's a charmer, but his timing could use some work. Winston loves trucks, so we'll explore construction, car racing, and more. Join us on Growing Up, the Lingo Kids podcast inspiring you to chase all your dreams. Listen to Growing Up on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or

wherever you get your podcasts.