# Aggressive vine



## Diana/KY (Jan 5, 2003)

I've been trying to find someone who knows what this vine is for months now, so I'm so glad you all started this forum! Hopefully, someone out there knows what it is. I live in NE Kentucky. The vine is very aggressive, grows along the ground and up into trees. It will grow up into a tree and completely cover it and I would say, eventually kill it. The vine is very thin and has kind of a dry outer skin that can peel off after the vine is so old. It becomes thick at the base where it comes out of the ground, but the vines going up into the trees are thin. If left alone it will take over a whole hillside, with many vines growing up out of the ground in one place and all of them growing up the tree. The leaves of the vine are green in winter as you can see in the picture. We have had a very mild winter so far, though. Any ideas? I'd love to know what this stuff is. I tried to save some trees from being smothered by the vine, but it's so thick the task is nearly impossible and after spending half and hour cutting and pulling them from one tree I just gave up. BTW this picture is of what I think is the young leafs. Some of the older leafs on the vine which I think were more mature were larger and more widely spaced and not clustered together like these. 
.....I don't see anything on here that says "manage attachment" like I read in the directions on how to post a picture  Can someone tell me how to get my picture posted here? Thanks


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## AngieM2 (May 10, 2002)

Diana

about the picture. Use the resizer and resized it to the deminsion listed in that post. Save to a place in your computer that you can find it. Then go to the manage attachement, browse and find the saved small photo and hit the attach...when it is connected the photo address will show below the main browse box. Then go to the bottom of that windwo and his okay, enter, whatever that button is.

It should work.

Give it another try.

Angie


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## Diana/KY (Jan 5, 2003)

AngieM2 said:


> Diana
> 
> about the picture. Use the resizer and resized it to the deminsion listed in that post. Save to a place in your computer that you can find it. Then go to the manage attachement, browse and find the saved small photo and hit the attach...when it is connected the photo address will show below the main browse box. Then go to the bottom of that windwo and his okay, enter, whatever that button is.
> 
> ...


Angie, I have resized my pictures, saved them to my computer, then I go to post a message... but no where do I see the words "manage attachment". When I look down at the bottom of the page it does say this in the box under Forum rules: 
You may post new threads
You may post replies 
You may NOT  post attachments
You may edit you posts

Do you think that has something to do with it?


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## AngieM2 (May 10, 2002)

ptions: Automatically parse URLs: automatically adds  and  around internet addresses. 
Disable Smilies in This Post 
Show signature: include your profile signature. Only registered users may have signatures. 
Thread Subscription: No Subscription Subscribe without email notification Instant notification by email Daily updates by email Weekly updates by email 
*Attach Files: Manage Attachments*
Valid file extensions: bmp doc gif jpe jpeg jpg mpg pdf png psd txt 
Reason for editing:
(optional) 

Diana - there are two ways to reply, one is on the left bottom of the post you are reading - it has two buttons, one is START A NEW THREAD the other is POST REPLY. This is the one you want. The above is cut from what you will see under that when you use those buttons....
It appears that you replied to this using the right REPLY button that includes the post you are replying to.

I do not think the information at top of this post is just seen by moderators.
Give it anothe try - angie


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## marvella (Oct 12, 2003)

finally. i get to answer one before ten other people. :haha: i like this forum too.

without the pic yet, i'd still guess you are seeing kudzu, a truly impressive plant. i have a love/ hate relationship with the stuff. on a still summer day, you can literally hear it growing. lovely heart shaped, dark green leaves, flowers that look and smell like a cluster of grapes. neglect it for a year, and tell your house goodbye. you may never get control of it again. LOL!! it's the reason i started keeping goats and pb pigs in the first place. the goats kept it eaten down and the pigs rooted up the roots. the roots can survive, without leaves to collect energy, for 5 (!!) years. it is not uncommon to find roots as big as a man.

of course, the way some people log these hillsides, i still thank god for kudzu, to hold the mountain in it's place.


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## Diana/KY (Jan 5, 2003)

I see the options box and I see three options only. They are: 

Automatically parse URLs: automatically adds  and  around internet addresses. 
Disable Smilies in This Post 
Show Signature: include your profile signature. Only registered users may have signatures.  
Under this is another box that says Thread Subscription and under that one is a box that says Rate this Thread. 
None of these are there: Attach Files: Manage Attachments
Valid file extensions: bmp doc gif jpe jpeg jpg mpg pdf png psd txt 
Reason for editing:
(optional)  

There is nothing else in my options box.  
I wonder if it's just me that doesn't have all the options? Guess I'm not gonna identify that vine after all  

Thanks so much for trying to help me Angie. If you can think of anything else, let me know. Diana


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## Diana/KY (Jan 5, 2003)

Marvella, I wish I could show you the picture cause I have thought it might be kudzu. When I look for pictures of it on the Internet though, the pictures don't look like this vine. I would not say the leaves are heart shaped, but every other description you gave does sound like it and my goats do love this stuff. As a matter of fact, we had it growing in their pasture and I was so afraid this stuff was going to take over this hillside pasture right behind our house and before I knew it, the goats had eaten it all. They keep it under control on that hill.


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## Nan(TX) (Sep 13, 2002)

One thing you might try is.....
Go to the user cp button at the top of the page.








Under "Options" got to... 

Thread View Options
Post elements
Select which user features you wish to appear in posts.
See if ...
Images (Attachments & code) 
is checked.


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## marvella (Oct 12, 2003)

Diana/KY said:


> Marvella, I wish I could show you the picture cause I have thought it might be kudzu. When I look for pictures of it on the Internet though, the pictures don't look like this vine. I would not say the leaves are heart shaped, but every other description you gave does sound like it and my goats do love this stuff. As a matter of fact, we had it growing in their pasture and I was so afraid this stuff was going to take over this hillside pasture right behind our house and before I knew it, the goats had eaten it all. They keep it under control on that hill.


it is really excellent pasture- 22% protein. local wisdom has it that if you overgraze it for 5 years, it will die. it doesn't like shade either. but once it takes over a hillside, nothing else will ever have a chance. round up won't touch it. burning it off only releases it's mighty nitrogen content, so only feeds it. can't bush hog it. most people bulldoze it. it looks horrid, all that red clay left behind, nothing will grow on it for years and years after. i like the kudzu better than that.

http://www.nps.gov/vick/preserve/kudzu/kudzu.jpg

http://overstated.net/photos/kudzu/kudzu-car.jpg

http://www.jjanthony.com/kudzu/images/kudzuflower.jpg

pretty typical pix. as i looked, i noticed it's not a heart shaped leaf. that much growth over the car in the 2nd one is maybe half a summer's growth. car will be invisible by summers' end.


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## Diana/KY (Jan 5, 2003)

Diana/KY said:


> I've been trying to find someone who knows what this vine is for months now, so I'm so glad you all started this forum! Hopefully, someone out there knows what it is. I live in NE Kentucky. The vine is very aggressive, grows along the ground and up into trees. It will grow up into a tree and completely cover it and I would say, eventually kill it. The vine is very thin and has kind of a dry outer skin that can peel off after the vine is so old. It becomes thick at the base where it comes out of the ground, but the vines going up into the trees are thin. If left alone it will take over a whole hillside, with many vines growing up out of the ground in one place and all of them growing up the tree. The leaves of the vine are green in winter as you can see in the picture. We have had a very mild winter so far, though. Any ideas? I'd love to know what this stuff is. I tried to save some trees from being smothered by the vine, but it's so thick the task is nearly impossible and after spending half and hour cutting and pulling them from one tree I just gave up. BTW this picture is of what I think is the young leafs. Some of the older leafs on the vine which I think were more mature were larger and more widely spaced and not clustered together like these.
> .....I don't see anything on here that says "manage attachment" like I read in the directions on how to post a picture  Can someone tell me how to get my picture posted here? Thanks


I think I have the pictures here now! Can you see them? I used a site called Image Shack to upload them and then copied and pasted the url here. Still don't have that "manage attachment" showing up on my computer. 




















Thanks to ImageShack for Free Image Hosting


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## Diana/KY (Jan 5, 2003)

marvella said:


> it is really excellent pasture- 22% protein. local wisdom has it that if you overgraze it for 5 years, it will die. it doesn't like shade either. but once it takes over a hillside, nothing else will ever have a chance. round up won't touch it. burning it off only releases it's mighty nitrogen content, so only feeds it. can't bush hog it. most people bulldoze it. it looks horrid, all that red clay left behind, nothing will grow on it for years and years after. i like the kudzu better than that.
> 
> http://www.nps.gov/vick/preserve/kudzu/kudzu.jpg
> 
> ...


Amazing pictures Marvella, and thanks for sharing them. From looking at the pictures in your links, I know that my vine is not Kudzu. This vine has smaller, elongated, pointed leaves and they are much further spaced on the vine than kudzu. The pictures I finally got posted (hope you can see them) are of the leaves in the young stage. I will try to get pictures of the mature leaf tomorrow and post them and also a picture of the vines growing in the trees if I can.


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## Nan(TX) (Sep 13, 2002)

It worked I can see your pictures. :haha:


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## Diana/KY (Jan 5, 2003)

Nan(TX) said:


> It worked I can see your pictures. :haha:


Great! I may repost my pics in a new thread since nobody seems to be getting email notifications (I'm not) of new posts and may not get back on this thread to see my pictures. By the way Nan, I used your directions that you had on another thread on how to use an image hosting site to upload my pics and then copy and paste the URL here. Thanks!


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## dla (Jun 13, 2004)

Well, personally, I was having a blast with just the drama of whether or not you'd get the pic to post!  
I'm sure you will not be the first or last person to have trouble with that!  
(I hope I'm not the next!)
But I do know that the vine you describe had completely taken over the fencing around our old place, and it gave me rashes as bad as poison ivy!
The stuff was killer to get rid of - the only thing that eventually worked was to take down the fence and mow, mow, mow! :yeeha: 
Good luck in any case,
Deb


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## dla (Jun 13, 2004)

Sure would like to know the name of this beast!


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## kentuckyhippie (May 29, 2004)

diana, does it have any kind of flowers in the spring? we have something that had leaves like that and grows all over the trees etc. and it is a type of wisteria. in the spring it has lavender colored flowers that smell wonderful and look kind of like grape clusters.


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## Gayle in KY (May 13, 2002)

I live in eastern KY and that sure looks like honeysuckle to me. My place gets overrun with it.


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## TennOC (Aug 30, 2004)

Kudzu is not green in winter in Ky. It's either honeysuckle, or Crossvine will stay green too. Crossvines turn reddish in the winter. I think it's honeysuckle.


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## TennOC (Aug 30, 2004)

Forgot to say: You don't have to wear yourself out pulling vines, just cut them off at the bottom, near the stump of the tree, they will die and decay given time. They might grow back from the roots, cut again the next year. One cut will stop the top from getting nourishment from the roots.


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## Diana/KY (Jan 5, 2003)

Well I had another thread about this same vine and now it's not there any more. I was afraid this one would die out since I had so much trouble getting the pictures posted, so I started a new thread with more pictures. Wonder what happened to it? Anyway, the popular vote on the other thread was definitely honeysuckle or Japanese honeysuckle. Funny, but I never noticed if it has flowers. I guess I really didn't check the stuff out until this winter when I was looking at the trees on my hills and noticed they were covered with vines and getting really thick with them. I'll check to see if flowers come on this Spring for sure. We do smell honeysuckle in the air each year and pretty strong. When I first noticed how thick the vines were getting and started wanting to know what it was, honeysuckle never even entered my mind. I'd never seen honeysuckle vines before and in my mind I just thought of it as a little vine with fragrant flowers. I had no clue it was such a monster! Thanks for the replies. Diana


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## tnborn (Mar 18, 2005)

Have to agree with the others,
have to be some type of honeysuckle. first tought was kudzu until I saw the pictures. Turn the goats loose on it. cows might eat it. Donkeys will.
Good luck eradicating that.
tnborn


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