'Plant That Ate the South' Boosting Carbon Pollution

A plant called “the scourge of the South” has a new strike against it. Recent research shows that the impact of the invasive species in question, kudzu, is more troublesome than had been previously thought. When it takes over ecosystems, this invader causes soils to surrender their carbon and release it as greenhouse gas.

Alien invader
Kudzu is one of the most impressive invasive species in the world. Introduced to the US as a handful of plants in 1876, this invader now occupies over 3m hectares of land in the US, largely in the southeast of the country. It is estimated to be “consuming” land in the USA at a rate of 50,000 hectares per year to this day.


If anything could be said to grow like a weed, it is kudzu. It grows at an impressive rate of up to a metre every three days. The plant moves like a wave, smothering everything in its wake – trees, utility poles and even buildings.

It is a member of the legume family of plants – like beans – and grows in a vine-like manner, laying down roots whenever it comes into contact with the ground. Originally introduced as an ornamental plant and then for livestock feed and erosion control, it has since overrun entire ecosystems, destroying native long-needled pine forests, woodlots, and grasslands alike

In addition to the damage it inflicts by overwhelming other plants, kudzu has indirect effects as well. Most notably, it carries the “kudzu bug”. This foul-smelling insect is also an invasive species. Unfortunately, the kudzu bugs' taste extends beyond its namesake plant, and includes other legumes, such as beans grown for human consumption. This means kudzu’s impact is not only native ecosystems, but agricultural productivity as well.

Kudzu’s direct and indirect cost to the US economy is estimated to be in excess of US$500m annually. That cost may be set to increase. Rising temperatures and lengthened growing seasons in the northernmost front of the kudzu’s range are creating a welcoming environment for further invasion. Where it was once restricted to south-eastern states, Kudzu is now found in more northerly states, including New Jersey and Ohio.

New research suggests that kudzu’s negative impact may extend beyond that already documented. Its invasion may also be contributing to the rise in global greenhouse gases, by altering soil composition.

What lies beneath
Soil holds a phenomenal amount of carbon. In fact, there is more carbon stored in soil than in the atmosphere and in terrestrial plants, combined. Soil carbon comprises roots from plants, dead matter and waste from plants and animals, and a vast population of microbes. Together they are known as soil organic matter. Much of this comes from plants – mainly dead leaves – but also from dead roots, as well as stems, branches, and tree trunks that have fallen to the ground.

The carbon in the organic matter largely stays locked away in the soil, like an enormous reservoir. Over time, carbon is released as greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide and methane – when the matter is degraded by soil microbes. The extent to which carbon is determined by its susceptibility to microbial degradation.

The problem with kudzu is that it changes the rate at which carbon remains locked away in the soil. It changes the degradation rate of the organic matter.

n a paper published in the journal New Phytologist, plant ecologist Nishanth Tharayil and graduate student Mioko Tamura, of Clemson University, show that kudzu invasion results in an increase of carbon released from the soil organic matter into the atmosphere. Tharayil and Tamura investigated the impact of a kudzu invasion in native pine forests. They found that the invasion actually increased the amount of leaf material contributed to the soil, but, despite this, soil carbon decreased by nearly a third in those forests.

Tharayil and Tamura attribute the release of carbon from kudzu-invaded forests to the fact that kudzu adds material to the soil that is susceptible to degradation relative to that produced by pine. Simply put, kudzu leaves and stems are easy for microbes to degrade, pine needles and stems are not. This means that carbon is locked in with waste from pines; whereas, it gets released by kudzu.

When kudzu invades, its leaves, stems, and roots become the major plant contributors to the soil organic matter, replacing pines' contribution. This has a three-fold effect. First, over time, the hard-to-degrade pine matter decreases in abundance. Second, the easy-to-degrade kudzu matter actually encourages the degradation of the pine matter. That is, kudzu material “primes” the soil microbes to be more effective at degrading the plant material in the soil, including that previously contributed by pines. Finally, after invasion, the kudzu matter is simply more rapidly degraded itself. The net result of these three effects is that plant material is more rapidly degraded – it doesn’t persist like it did in the pine forests.

The south will rise again?
The impact of kudzu invasions on the release of former pine forests could be substantial. Tharayil has estimated that kudzu invasion might cause the release of 4.8 tonnes of carbon per year. This is the equivalent of the amount of carbon stored almost 5m hectares of forest, or the amount of carbon released by burning 2.3m tonnes of coal annually. That is approximately the same as the annual carbon footprint for a city of 1m in that part of the world.

The release of this amount of carbon into the atmosphere, as carbon dioxide, could itself contribute to global warming. This could create a snowball effect, as elevated temperature would enable kudzu to extend its range to more northern latitudes.

Not all news from Tharayil and Tamura is bad. They also looked at the impact of the invasion of another noxious weed, knotweed, on old fields. They found that knotweed, resulted in a net increase in carbon locked away in the soil. This is not to say that allowing knotweed to run rampant is the solution to kudzu’s carbon-releasing menace. Instead, the findings point to the fact that plant composition in different ecosystems could actually be managed to reinforce carbon retention in the soil, and prevent carbon release into the atmosphere.

In the meantime though, we are going to have to find a way to restrain the plant that ate the south, before it loads our skies with more carbon.

Dino-Killing Impact Remade Plant Kingdom, Too

In a matter of days, perhaps hours, a rare corpse flower will bloom in upstate New York. True to its name, the plant is expected to unleash a stench like rotting flesh.

Affectionately called "Wee Stinky," this corpse flower lives in a greenhouse at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Horticulturists at the school, who have been preparing for the plant to bloom for weeks, say it could open up any day now. Those curious can watch the rare spectacle online, mercifully, without the smell.
The species, also known as titan arum, is found in the rainforests of central Sumatra. The plant's bloom is just as short as it is pungent; corpse flowers only remain open for 24 to 48 hours before they wither away.

Wee Stinky had been dormant for more than two years, but last month, it became clear that the plant was ready to bloom again, according to Cornell's titan arum blog. The corpse flower started growing quickly. As of this morning, it measured more than 6 feet tall (1.8 meters). On Oct. 23, the plant wasn't even 2 feet tall (0.6 m).

It's hard to predict the exact day a titan arum will bloom, but Cornell's experts wrote that Wee Stinky's growth will slow and its outer layers will start to peel away right before it opens. To provide a sense of what this year's brief bloom might look like, Cornell has put together a time-lapse video of the first (and last) flowering of Wee Stinky. That bloom began on March 18, 2012, and lasted less than 48 hours. More than 10,000 visitors flocked to the greenhouse over five days to catch a glimpse (and perhaps a whiff) of the titan arum.
The open bloom may look like a single giant flower, but technically, it isn't. The plant's purple "petals" actually make up an outer skirt called a spathe, and the tubelike spike at its center is called a spadix. These structures have thousands of little flowers called an inflorescence.

Smelling like death actually helps this plant species survive. The fetid stench lures important pollinators like flesh-eating beetles and flies. The spadix heats up at the beginning of the bloom — becoming as warm as a human body — to help spread the odor.

Horticulturists at Cornell acquired a year-old seedling in 2002 that grew into Wee Stinky. A corpse flower may not bloom for the first time until it is about 10 years old. But after that, it could open up again every few years.

The bloom is a research opportunity for scientists at Cornell. Sensors on and above the blooming plant will collect data on the temperature and the volatiles that simulate the cues of a rotting corpse and attract pollinators.

Currently, Cornell's Kenneth Post Laboratory Greenhouses are open to the public from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. EST, but visiting hours will be extended once the flower blooms.

Dino-Killing Impact Remade Plant Kingdom, Too

The killer meteorite that extinguished the dinosaurs also torched North America's forests and plants. The harsh conditions after the impact favored fast-growing flowering plants, nudging forests toward a new pecking order, a new study reports.

As a result, today's forests would baffle a Brachiosaurus. Most of the slow-growing trees and shrubs munched by dinosaurs are minor players in modern forests, because the plants couldn't adapt to post-impact climate swings, researchers report today (Sept. 16) in the journal PLOS Biology.

"When you look at forests around the world today, you don't see many forests dominated by evergreen flowering plants," lead study author Benjamin Blonder said in a statement. "Instead, they are dominated by deciduous species, plants that lose their leaves at some point during the year."

Dinosaurs stomped through forests ruled by evergreen angiosperms, which never drop leaves. Angiosperms are flowering plants, grasses and trees, excluding conifers like spruce and pine. The dinosaur-era angiosperms included ancient relatives of holly, rhododendrons and sandalwood. Other plants in the ancient forests included beeches, cycads, gingkoes, ferns and palm trees.

Fossil records show that angiosperms of all kinds thrived before a meteorite or asteroid crashed into Earth 66 million years ago. That stupendous blast charred vast woodlands that had grown from Canada to New Mexico. In North America, about 60 percent of plant species went extinct, according to earlier studies.

After the blaze, deciduous angiosperms, which drop their leaves seasonally, bounced back much better than the evergreens.

Blonder, an ecologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson, wanted to know why the deciduous angiosperms outcompeted their evergreen cousins during the cold, dark years after the impact (called an impact winter). The researchers pored through thousands of prehistoric leaves from Wyoming's Hell Creek Formation. The fossilized leaves spanned the impact, from the last 1.4 million years of the Cretaceous Period through the first 800,000 years of the Tertiary Period.

Based on their analysis, the researchers said the properties of the plant leaves likely helped them withstand the bleak climate. The impact winter pushed ecosystems toward plants with faster growing strategies, Blonder told Live Science in an email interview. "Leaves represent a drain on a plant's resources when photosynthesis can't occur. Thus, deciduous species should be favored over evergreen species," he said.

The researchers analyzed leaf mass per area, which indicates how much carbon a plant invests in growing a leaf. "[This] tells us whether the leaf was a chunky, expensive one to make for the plant, or whether it was a more flimsy, cheap one," Blonder said. The scientists also looked at leaf vein density, a measure of how fast a plant takes up carbon.

"Our study provides evidence of a dramatic shift from slow-growing plants to fast-growing species," Blonder said. "This tells us that the extinction was not random. And, potentially, this also tells us why we find that modern forests are generally deciduous and not evergreen."