[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
First, it was "locavore," or a person who consumes locally grown foods, that made it into the sustainable living lextcon. Now, it's "solastalgia," a term used to describe a form of homesickness one gets when one is still at home," that's found it's way into sustainable dialogue. A December 2007 article in Wired magazine publicly introduced the term, which Australian philosopher Gelnn Albrecht coined after conducting years of research on the topic. Albrecht interviewed Australians and heard their stories of sadness from watching their native landscape drastically change in the wake of global warming. To create the term, he combined solacium (comfort) and algia (pain) to create a word purposefully akin to "nostalgia."
But "global" is part of the phrase "global warming" for a reason: the effects of our current environmental state are felt across the world. So, it stands to reason that those of us living in the Southeastern U.S. could also be experiencing solastalgia, whether from recent harsh dry spells or the effects on environment and habitat from steep slope development.
And even from kudzu. Okay, at first it might seem like a distant connection. But, after New Life Journal heard about solastalgia, we wanted to bring the global idea down to a more local level. Many would point out kudzu's destruction of native habitat here in the Southeast, which has created a different picture of our great outdoors and left many feeling a longing for the plants and animals that were once abundant here. But, many in the region don't see kudzu from this perspective, although they still might have feelings of solastalgia that stem from other environmental reasons.
Replica Roger Dubuis WatchSo, like a good therapist, New Life Journal wanted to be sure we were talking about the feeling many of you might be experiencing. We wish that we could offer a ritual, holistic remedy, or any prescription to fix the feeling, but we're just a magazine! What we can offer, though, is a variety of perspectives from area residents with a relationship to kudzu. Maybe the article will help you see that kudzu in your backyard as a blessing where you once saw it as a curse, or provide you with motivation to effectively reverse the curse and get back that segment of the natural environment you've been missing.
Remove and Renew
by Kevin Caldwell, a conservation biologist and planner with Mountains-to-Sea Ecological, Inc.
Among the exotic-invasive plants in our region, kudzu is "king" in terms of destroying native non-forested habitats, rare plants and wildlife habitat ... even taking down forest edges in very little time.
The biggest issue here is permanent damage to the native biodiversity of the Southeast--rare "open" habitats, rare species, and native plants and wildlife. I'm stunned to hear when anyone who truly loves these mountains and its forests, plants and wildlife considers kudzu for planting, as just one planting will serve as a source for kudzu's spread to neighboring properties and open habitats even miles away. Birds, wildlife and wind move and carry seeds in ways and distances you cannot imagine. It will invade rare habitats (like cliffs, rock outcrops, bogs, remote areas) that cannot be controlled (or controlled only at great expense) and permanently alter them. They then have to be monitored to make sure plants from the original planting don't re-establish.
There are over 6,000 species of plants in NC alone and thousands in the mountain region. Combined with thousands of horticultural varieties, there are far more plants available for beauty, usage and consumption that don't threaten our biodiversity like kudzu (assuming such plants are not carriers for introduced fungus, etc., which they sometimes are.)
If you really love kudzu, I would encourage you to go and harvest entire patches of it that already exist and then kill off the patch when you leave. You could do this your entire life in the Southeast and always Pandora Bracelet Charm have colonies left.
I have spent the last two years removing kudzu, privet, multiflora rose, Japanese honeysuckle, and other non-native plants on my property, and the results are amazing! Areas originally layered in trilliums and over 20 rare plants, choked down to almost nothing, are now flourishing again as these noxious invaders are eliminated. No more spicebush sprawling with kudzu and honeysuckle. I'll take my spicebush swallowtails (butterflies), thanks!
Open Opportunities
by Paul Gallimore, director of the Long Branch Environmental Education Center
As many of us are already too painfully aware, kudzu (Pueraria montana var. lobata) is an invasive exotic species from China and Japan that is killing our native forests and choking out the habitat for our native species, covering as many as 200 additional square miles per year. (Some may speculate that runaway development is the kudzu-like menace of the human world!) If all this weren't enough, it's also recently been implicated in contributing to ground-level ozone pollution and global climate change.
