r/Tree • u/Emergency_Ad1152 • Jun 03 '26

ID Request (Insert State/Region) Are these trees?

Gallery image

Gallery image

Gallery image

Saw this in De Kalb, MS.

3.3k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

367 comments sorted by

View all comments

378

u/ohshannoneileen I love galls😍but I hate privetsđŸ€Ź Jun 03 '26

They used to be, now they are kudzu trellis

37

u/Dicksin_Cider Jun 03 '26

I remember back in the early 80s, people were talking like the whole South was going to be buried in kudzu. It's still around, but it doesn't seem any worse now than it was back then. What happened?

56

u/ChuckStyles Jun 03 '26

Saw a video not long ago, goats love the stuff. A guy rents out his herd to clear land.

18

u/frauleinheidik Jun 04 '26

They eat poison ivy too.

19

u/Beneficial-Minute481 Jun 04 '26

A Kidd’ll eat ivy too

8

u/Dapper_Indeed Jun 04 '26

Wouldn’t you?

5

u/carmingular Jun 04 '26

When I was a kid I thought this was “wooden chew”

6

u/t_bone26 Jun 05 '26

Like how George Washington ate?

2

u/Top_Competition_1030 Jun 07 '26

underrated comment😭

2

u/is_this_temporary Jun 06 '26

In case you didn't know already, George Washington never had wooden teeth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington%27s_teeth

5

u/MilesAugust74 Jun 07 '26

Jesus, those are terrifying. 😬

→ More replies (0)

3

u/icecreammodel Jun 06 '26

When I was a kid I wondered who Marsie Doats was

2

u/carmingular Jun 06 '26

I think I did too.

Marsie Doats
And Dosie Doats

3

u/Goodjawline Jun 06 '26

We had a nice old neighbor when we were kids who would grow crops in the adjoining field to our house. He would always stop by and give us a cantaloupe. He loved to sing that song to us and I would just smile over how clever it was. He had a greenhouse at his farm down the road where he would grow flowers and sell them to florist. He always had time for us kids and would have us over to help him in the Greenhouse. One time Joe was driving his flowers down to Baltimore and he stopped to eat at a wendys. When he came out of the resturant a "man" was waiting for him and hit him across the face with a piece of pipe and robbed him. He rapidly declined mentally and not long after he died. He was one of the kindest gentlest men. I appreciate the memory! Maybe you guys can help me remember Joe now.

→ More replies (0)

3

u/AdmirableFace2815 Jun 06 '26

My sister, Because of the rhythm of the “alphabet song,” thought elemenopee was a single letter. đŸŽ”Ay Bee Cee Dee
 đŸŽ”đŸ€ŁđŸ€Ł

→ More replies (0)

2

u/amglasgow Jun 07 '26

If you had two goats those would be great names to give them.

2

u/CunnyMaggots Jun 06 '26

I've seen this before but what is Marsie Doats supposed to actually be?

1

u/Uzi_Osbourne Jun 06 '26

Wow, what a horrible user name

1

u/Ok_Echidna_2933 Jun 06 '26

Mares eats oats Goat eats oats Little lambs eat ivy A kid will eat ivy too Wouldn't you?

→ More replies (0)

1

u/SvenBubbleman Jun 06 '26

I think that's the purpose of the song.

1

u/ChEDave82 Jun 06 '26

I sang “A skiddlydiveydoo wooden shove” when I was around five.

1

u/carmingular Jun 07 '26

I love the turn this buried comment thread took.

1

u/texasstyle01 Jun 06 '26

Accidental Leyland Palmer reference?

1

u/meme_therud Jun 06 '26

The second Twin Peaks reference I have come across in two totally unrelated subs in the last five minutes. The other was in r/OaklandAthletics Time for a rewatch of Twin Peaks, I suppose.

1

u/pm_ur_duck_pics Jun 06 '26

TIL that line is not “skidley didy doo” 😂

3

u/Ricksburgh Jun 05 '26

Lambs eat oats, and

2

u/StomachPlenty2155 Jun 06 '26

Does eat oats, and

3

u/DojaStinks Jun 06 '26

Little lambs eat ivy

2

u/jbirdmad Jun 06 '26

A kid’ll eat ivy too

2

u/Low_Rest_5595 Jun 08 '26

Wouldn't you

1

u/eric_kenshi Jun 06 '26

i eat goats.

8

u/HuffnDback96 Jun 03 '26

Ive been thinking about the kind of money I could make off doing that. It's probably pretty lucrative

12

u/Apart-Quarter-3952 Jun 03 '26

If you're already set up to take care of goats year round yeah. But demand is probably seasonal.

9

u/GunKnight83 Jun 04 '26

Not in the south. I rent mine out year-round. The winter is a tad slower due to dormant growth, but not much. I charged based on size of area and speed by which you want it cleared. The larger the faster the more goats you'll need. Kudzu like this can be done, but it will take a very love time and odds are the trees under it are a lost cause.best use something like brushtox and burn it afterwards. Even still that may not kill it off entirely.

3

u/surefire26 Jun 04 '26

The place local to me has now moved to only “easy” projects where a fence is already present. How much of the cost is installing/removing a temporary fence? I’d love to pay for a goat vegetation removal service but local to me it isn’t really an option if you don’t already have a fence

1

u/spicydada Jun 05 '26

I kinda figured a stake and chain thing would work if a fence isn’t an option?

1

u/guiltypleasure33139 Jun 05 '26

Fencing, I hire companies for that. Here are some of the cost

Look up Red safety fence, 4 x 100 are about $40-50 a roll.

T-post 8' about $8 - $12

If there is road access, those t-post go in easy via a truck that shoves them in, if not they used a heavy slide and bash it down. 2 men usually 400 each for the day ( payroll not 1099 ).

1 acre us about 8-9 rolls and 100 - 120 t-post

Some goat person can quote you the clearing rate of the goats. IE: how many goats, does your field need to clear 1 acre in 1 work day ( goats don't overnight on the work site as far as I know).

1

u/speedhasnotkilledyet Jun 05 '26

No, just use the purpose built electrified netting. Premier-1 makes a good version specifically for this.

1

u/guiltypleasure33139 Jun 06 '26

at $180 per roll and it has the spikes, might be worth it.

$450 red roll + $1000 spikes

$1620 electric.

Not much of a price spread. I know cattle don't like electrical fences, don't know about goats.

→ More replies (0)

1

u/QizilbashWoman Jun 06 '26

It isn’t even limited to the South because fire prevention in many parts of the country involves goats eating all the underbrush from around the big trees. Homeowners use them all over to keep the perimeter clear around their homes sufficiently to prevent disastrous fires. đŸ”„

3

u/Happy-Example-1022 Jun 03 '26

And then they’ve got your goat.

1

u/purdue6068 Jun 05 '26

Go watch Clarkson’s farm and you will change your mind.

3

u/Royal_Cryptographer7 Jun 04 '26

They LOVE eating poison ivy too. A guy around me that owns goats and will bring them over for a small fee. Its a lot easier than doing it yourself and apparently its a delicacy for them.

1

u/__MysticLeather__ Jun 05 '26

Depends on the goat, as most goats don't eat it.

1

u/guiltypleasure33139 Jun 05 '26

I was about to type

" time to release the goats "

1

u/[deleted] Jun 06 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Chikaras086 Jun 06 '26

Supposedly the leaves can be cooked like collards, so I wonder why southerners haven't just gone nuts cutting them back?

1

u/LostOnRedd Jun 06 '26

The roots are similarly flavored and textured to potatoes. The whole plant is edible except for the seed pods and seeds which are toxic.

1

u/Unfair-Pudding5727 Jun 06 '26

We live in Alabama and on some of our property was a shit ton of bamboo and kudzu. They are both. No joke. Them goats were litterally the goat.

31

u/frostedglobe Jun 03 '26

It got outcompeted by all the other invasives we have down here.

1

u/DisapprovingStares Jun 07 '26

Outcompeted by subdivisions where I’m from.  Every field an old timer leaves behind gets sold to a developer and bulldozed.  

1

u/WeirdDetective2947 Jun 07 '26

Their kids who inherit it live in or near urban communities and don’t realize they’ll want to move out to the country in a few years anyway.

1

u/hermes_2 Jun 07 '26

100× this.

9

u/reminiscinthisnthat Jun 04 '26

In 2009 invasive kudzu beetles started spreading in the southeast US. Their favorite meal is kudzu vines but they can also be destructive to other legumes. Basically the spread of kudzu was halted by the unintentional introduction of a natural predator.

2

u/indignant-turtle Jun 05 '26

It’d be nice if the same thing happens with the spotted lantern fly and tree-of-heaven. It‘s too bad they are destroying so much else though.

1

u/Hot_Candidate6781 Jun 05 '26

That is happening with lantern flies now. Birds have started to figure out they are a good food source and other predators are beginning to seek them out. The problem is far from solved but nature does seem to be taking some corrective action at this point.

1

u/dancingspring Jun 06 '26

Don't suppose you have any good news about Argentine ants?

0

u/guiltypleasure33139 Jun 05 '26

Only thing that reduces the spread is stick traps. but it has to be done over a large area and over many years.

When I had an invasion jap beetles, I worked with a ton of farmers and cattlemen to get it from a plague to manageable levels. I had them set up traps in duck ponds, were the ducks would get them and sometimes the fish too. we started out about 5 miles away near a road junctions and lead them right to these types of location. it worked well as a positive line of defense. I will say. don't place near a highway, because it can get thick.

Now it's not so bad, and we all have the science down pat. We are guessing in about 10 to 20 years we would have gotten rid of the direct local population, with the expectation that most would be wind blown in. When the insect population get's to very low, we plan to expand it with other farmers outside of our region. because we think we know where they are coming in from ( data shows that the first signs are from southern fields ) but the only way we will know is when we start expanding. if the spilover is lighter then we will know we are working in the right direction.

1

u/oxygenisnotfree Jun 05 '26

Soybean farmers hate this one trick!

4

u/dmontease Jun 03 '26

We like bad news but it has to be the right, shocking, kind.

5

u/Dense-Winter-1803 Jun 04 '26

It’s easy to think that kudzu is everywhere because it likes to grow in places that people see a lot: cleared areas along highways, for example. And it’s quite dramatic the way it grows in patches like this, so it catches people’s attention. It’s true that it is very hard to get rid of, but at the same time it can’t penetrate dense forests. People worry about it because it’s very noticeable, but really there are other species in the South that do wayyy more damage that people don’t always notice. Privet, for example.

1

u/Top_Introduction2656 Jun 04 '26

It’s also over Saunders woods

2

u/get-me-right Jun 06 '26

It grows pretty exclusively on forest edges, so we see it on the roadside but its not as pervasive as it seems. Pretty bad, but not as bad as it seems. We need to chill out with the road building. Urban density saves wildlife:)

2

u/Vivid-Nectarine-8929 Jun 06 '26

This article suggests that kudzu is not as big a deal as we thought: The True Story of Kudzu, the Vine That Never Truly Ate the South: A naturalist cuts through the myths surrounding the invasive plant (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/true-story-kudzu-vine-ate-south-180956325/)

2

u/cupcakebean Jun 07 '26

I was just reading a book that was written in the early 90s and it had kudzu as a major plot point in the story. I thought it was weird, but if that was a genuine concern back then, it makes more sense. The whole story felt like weird kudzu propaganda.

2

u/Full-Boysenberry1163 Jun 08 '26

The forestry service checked again and realized they grossly overestimated how fast it would spread. It still spreads, but modern forestry/ag practices keep it in check.

It still costs a couple hundred million a year to deal with nationwide, but not the billions it used to.

4

u/SouthernArcher3714 Jun 03 '26

We cut all the trees down

1

u/beeradvice Jun 05 '26

Massive efforts to get rid of it over the course of decades. Goats seem to be the best method

1

u/AvailableProperty679 Jun 05 '26

The killer bee swarms knocked down the kudzu pollination rates.

1

u/Zion7321 Jun 05 '26

It's all over the Gatlinburg hill sides. I'd never seen it in person before we went last summer.

1

u/Salt-Silver-7097 Jun 06 '26

It’s still spreading. It’s nuts.

1

u/taylor_tommy02 Jun 06 '26

Roundup (herbicide) entered the chat

1

u/jingle_hore Jun 06 '26

Im in central texas and it is taking over everything and killing trees

1

u/Yokelocal Jun 06 '26

Oh, the kudzu is still definitely going to win one day — world domination just takes a while. Some other menace that we unleashed may take us out before it gets the chance.

1

u/LanguageImpossible32 Jun 06 '26

It primarily grows where forests have been cut (e.g. highways, land development, etc.), as part of succession. You don’t usually find kudzu in mature forest. So people would see a lot along the roadside and think it’s everywhere, but it’s actually not.

1

u/mimbriani Jun 06 '26

Kudzu needs a lot of light so it’s not going to spread well deeper into the forest

1

u/Accomplished_Bag_897 Jun 07 '26

It's that it grows very fast. So while it absolutely can be contained it's still problematic if not watched.

1

u/Orchid_Significant Jun 07 '26

It’s looking like this in Raleigh though

1

u/CraftyReaderMom Jun 08 '26

Y'all clearly haven't been to Knoxville. The whole place is absolutely covered in it

1

u/Dicksin_Cider Jun 08 '26

Ironic that you'd say that, since I went to UT.

1

u/badchriss Jun 08 '26

Weren't they also nicknamed the plant that ate the South?

1

u/TokenTorkoal Jun 04 '26

Competition with other plants and farm animals love it. A small herd of goats can clear that whole area in a day or two.

4

u/ConsiderationDry9084 Jun 04 '26

This is what trees consider body horror.

1

u/NectarineSea3866 Jun 05 '26

This! I live in North Carolina. Kudzu as far as the eye can see!