WEBVTT - FB 107: A Tale of Two Pests: How Gypsy Moths and Kudzu Took Over America 0:00:01.560 --> 0:00:04.120 We all need a break from the constant cycle to 0:00:04.240 --> 0:00:08.520 learn something new, to gain new perspectives. The Great Courses 0:00:08.520 --> 0:00:11.399 Plus streaming service is an excellent resource to expand our 0:00:11.440 --> 0:00:14.240 knowledge on a variety of subjects or pick up a 0:00:14.240 --> 0:00:17.239 new hobby. I've been enjoying the Great Courses Plus while 0:00:17.280 --> 0:00:21.360 researching this season of Flashback. Lectures like Playball, the Rise 0:00:21.400 --> 0:00:24.720 of Baseball is America's pastime, History of the Supreme Court, 0:00:25.000 --> 0:00:27.920 and Battlefield Europe have helped me connect the dots on 0:00:28.040 --> 0:00:31.680 several stories from history. Right now, they're giving our listeners 0:00:31.680 --> 0:00:35.240 a special limited time offer a free month of unlimited 0:00:35.280 --> 0:00:38.519 access to their entire library. Sign up now through our 0:00:38.560 --> 0:00:41.760 special U r L go to the Great Courses Plus 0:00:41.800 --> 0:00:45.920 dot com slash as. That's the Great Courses Plus dot 0:00:45.960 --> 0:00:49.640 com slash o z y the Great Courses Plus dot 0:00:49.680 --> 0:01:03.240 Com slash as. Welcome to Flashback, a podcast about history's 0:01:03.320 --> 0:01:08.480 unintended consequences. I'm Sean Braswell. In today's episode, a Tale 0:01:08.520 --> 0:01:30.640 of twin invasions, one by vine and one by Caterpillar. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 0:01:30.920 --> 0:01:34.400 eight seventy six. Welcome to the first World's Fair to 0:01:34.440 --> 0:01:37.640 be held in the United States. It's called the Centennial 0:01:37.680 --> 0:01:42.320 International Exhibition, and it's the celebration of America's on birthday, 0:01:42.760 --> 0:01:45.440 and it is one hell of a history making affair. 0:01:46.120 --> 0:01:49.520 It's exhibits read like a who's who of American inventions. 0:01:49.880 --> 0:01:55.360 Alexander Graham, Bell's first telephone, Thomas Edison's automatic telegraph, Henry J. 0:01:55.520 --> 0:02:00.640 Hyness catchup the first typewriter. Nearly ten million visitors will 0:02:00.640 --> 0:02:04.680 attend the exposition, but two lesser known exhibits were also 0:02:04.760 --> 0:02:07.200 present at the fair, ones that are at the center 0:02:07.240 --> 0:02:10.520 of today's episode. For the first we enter into the 0:02:10.600 --> 0:02:17.520 Japanese pavilion. When the World's Fair came to the United States, 0:02:18.400 --> 0:02:24.040 there was an effort to build relationships between Japan and 0:02:24.080 --> 0:02:28.200 the United States. This is Bill Finch, the historian, horticulturalist, 0:02:28.360 --> 0:02:32.519 and a conservation advisor for the E. O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation. 0:02:33.240 --> 0:02:37.040 A classic Japanese vine was on display inside that pavilion, 0:02:37.560 --> 0:02:42.040 one hailed as the ideal shading plant for porches or courtyards. 0:02:42.200 --> 0:02:45.560 It didn't really catch on. It was just a sort 0:02:45.560 --> 0:02:48.680 of another one of many plants from Japan, like as 0:02:48.720 --> 0:02:52.240 a is and comills and other things uh T plants 0:02:52.360 --> 0:02:56.440 that that they thought might be of interest to Americans. 0:02:56.919 --> 0:02:59.440 The vine was kud zoo, and while it wasn't a 0:02:59.520 --> 0:03:02.600 hit at the eighteen seventy six World's Fair, kud zoo 0:03:02.639 --> 0:03:06.480 is now perhaps America's most infamous weed, the poster child 0:03:06.600 --> 0:03:10.720 for an invasive species. We'll get back to that. If 0:03:10.760 --> 0:03:13.200 you walked around the World's Fair long enough, you would 0:03:13.240 --> 0:03:17.440 also come across something else, some stunning pencil and pastel drawings, 0:03:18.000 --> 0:03:23.079 gorgeous pictures of planets, stars, nebulas, the northern lights. They 0:03:23.080 --> 0:03:25.840 were the work of an eccentric French artist and astronomer 0:03:26.120 --> 0:03:30.360 named at the end Leopold Trouvelo. Thanks to Trouvolo, another 0:03:30.440 --> 0:03:33.680 species every bit as invasive as kud zoo, would begin 0:03:33.720 --> 0:03:36.880 its own assault on the United States, the gypsy moth. 0:03:37.560 --> 0:03:43.160 Ye first though, we turned to that pesky invasive vine 0:03:43.680 --> 0:03:47.880 cut suit. So that's a funny story. We we moved 0:03:48.240 --> 0:03:50.680 to Florida tight years ago from New York City. This 0:03:50.760 --> 0:03:55.800 is Dr Susanna Valente and my husband, he was an architect, 0:03:55.880 --> 0:03:57.800 and he said, so today, no, I'm going to be 0:03:57.800 --> 0:04:00.600 a farmer from now on. And it was quite of 0:04:00.640 --> 0:04:05.160 a change. And so we bought this land and it's 0:04:05.200 --> 0:04:07.400 in a very nice area of Florida, in the area 0:04:07.400 --> 0:04:10.000 of West Palm Beach, and he wants to grow an 0:04:10.120 --> 0:04:15.520 organic farm, and so we have animals with cows, chicken, turkeys, geese, ducks. 0:04:15.840 --> 0:04:18.160 Volente and her husband found that running a farm can 0:04:18.200 --> 0:04:21.599 be a challenging endeavor, and so one day we had 0:04:21.600 --> 0:04:25.919 a an infection in the turkeys. It was a respiratory 0:04:25.920 --> 0:04:28.800 infection in turkeys. Valenta and her husband wanted to find 0:04:28.800 --> 0:04:31.440 a natural cure for the ailment, and they came up 0:04:31.440 --> 0:04:34.279 with a regane oil, so we used it actually in 0:04:34.360 --> 0:04:37.039 the water in the turkeys, and in within two weeks 0:04:37.040 --> 0:04:39.600 we cleared the infections in the animals. And we got 0:04:39.640 --> 0:04:41.839 interested in these natural products, and we're reading about a 0:04:41.839 --> 0:04:44.400 lot of things and we tumble upon kudzu as well. 0:04:44.600 --> 0:04:46.760 Kudzu was not just in the books that Valente and 0:04:46.800 --> 0:04:49.719 her husband read. It was all over their farm pretty 0:04:49.800 --> 0:04:51.920 much everywhere. It covers up a lot of the trees 0:04:51.960 --> 0:04:54.320 around here. But I actually think it's a pretty thing, 0:04:54.680 --> 0:04:57.599 and she soon learned that the invasive vine was more 0:04:57.640 --> 0:05:01.000 than just pretty. So kudzu head is very interesting anti inflammatory, 0:05:01.080 --> 0:05:05.440 anti microbial properties as well. So we started got interested 0:05:05.520 --> 0:05:07.560 in it. In one day, my husband said, hey, why 0:05:07.600 --> 0:05:10.719 don't you look into HIV as well. Valente's husband wasn't 0:05:10.760 --> 0:05:14.680 worried about the turkeys getting HIV. You see, his wife, Susannah, 0:05:14.760 --> 0:05:17.880 is not just an organic farmer. She's an immunologist at 0:05:17.880 --> 0:05:21.239 the Script's Research Institute, one of several trying to find 0:05:21.240 --> 0:05:25.160 new ways to combat HIV. And so, thanks to her 0:05:25.240 --> 0:05:32.000 husband's suggestion, Valente started to investigate kad Zoo each spring 0:05:32.040 --> 0:05:34.440 and summer. Across the American South, you hear a lot 0:05:34.520 --> 0:05:37.880 of stories like this one from Channel thirteen w m 0:05:37.920 --> 0:05:41.080 a Z News in Macon, Georgia. Right over here is 0:05:41.120 --> 0:05:43.960 where it gets the most out of hand. Ginger Hudson 0:05:44.040 --> 0:05:47.159 has overcome a lot of battles. She lost her first 0:05:47.240 --> 0:05:51.080 husband and survived breast cancer, but now she's at war 0:05:51.279 --> 0:05:54.599 with kad Zoo just choking everything out, is covering them. 0:05:54.680 --> 0:05:57.039 You can't see anything like there. There was a tree 0:05:57.240 --> 0:06:01.440 underneath that big bush right there, but it's no longer 0:06:01.480 --> 0:06:04.719 they are because the killed him. It sometimes called the 0:06:04.800 --> 0:06:07.880 vine that ate the South. Kud Zoo now blankets large 0:06:07.920 --> 0:06:10.919 portions of the southeastern US. If you grew up in 0:06:10.920 --> 0:06:13.040 the South like I did, and spend any amount of 0:06:13.040 --> 0:06:17.200 time driving on the highways, it felt like Kudzoo was everywhere. 0:06:17.480 --> 0:06:21.240 Kazoo is a trailing and climbing semi woody vine. It 0:06:21.360 --> 0:06:24.360 can't get um woody stems up to you know, thick 0:06:24.440 --> 0:06:26.919 as your arm, sometimes even up to ten inches or 0:06:26.920 --> 0:06:31.000 so in diameter. Nancy Loewenstein is the executive director of 0:06:31.040 --> 0:06:35.320 the Alabama Invasive Plant Council. The leaves are trifoliate, so 0:06:35.320 --> 0:06:39.800 there's three leaflets um. The flowers are lavender to purple 0:06:40.080 --> 0:06:43.800 colored with a yellow center. And the flowers smell like grapes. 0:06:44.360 --> 0:06:46.640 So sometimes when we're walking around in the summertime and 0:06:46.880 --> 0:06:49.120 just in the middle of nowhere and needs smell what 0:06:49.200 --> 0:06:51.479 kind of smells like great kool aid or great bubblegum? 0:06:51.920 --> 0:06:54.719 Start looking around and you're likely to find some Kudzoo 0:06:54.760 --> 0:06:57.679 flowers in the area. And where does the vine grow best? 0:06:57.920 --> 0:06:59.920 Might be easier to say where it does not grow well, 0:07:00.360 --> 0:07:02.679 and that is it does not grow well in really 0:07:02.720 --> 0:07:06.880 wet areas or very high pH sools. It does also 0:07:06.920 --> 0:07:10.080 doesn't do well in the shade, so you don't see 0:07:10.080 --> 0:07:13.040 it too often in dense forests. See it more often 0:07:13.320 --> 0:07:16.600 in open areas and kad zoo has already started to 0:07:16.680 --> 0:07:20.120 eat parts of America beyond the South. Well, it's already 0:07:20.160 --> 0:07:24.040 spread all the way up into um southern New England. 0:07:25.000 --> 0:07:29.960 It's up into Illinois, Indiana, western West, into Missouri and Arkansas. 0:07:29.960 --> 0:07:35.200 It's even pushing into Kansas and Oklahoma, Texas, and then 0:07:35.240 --> 0:07:39.160 there's a few disc junct populations over in Oregon in Arizona. 0:07:39.600 --> 0:07:42.000 It's estimated that kud zoo costs up to half a 0:07:42.040 --> 0:07:45.640 billion dollars in lost crop, land and control costs each year. 0:07:46.240 --> 0:07:48.320 So how did the invasive plant go from being a 0:07:48.360 --> 0:07:55.320 World's Fair novelty to a catastrophic nuisance in the years 0:07:55.360 --> 0:07:57.640 after the World's Fair? If you found kud zoo in 0:07:57.680 --> 0:08:01.920 the US, it was usually for ornamental purposes. Bill Finch again, 0:08:02.280 --> 0:08:05.200 So if you were in New England in the nineteenth 0:08:05.200 --> 0:08:07.600 century and you had a bit of money, and you 0:08:07.640 --> 0:08:11.200 were a bit of a horticultural experiment, or somebody would 0:08:11.200 --> 0:08:14.000 like to trying new plants in the garden, you might 0:08:14.040 --> 0:08:17.520 have tried using kud zoo as an ornamental vine, and 0:08:17.560 --> 0:08:20.960 a few people did. It was pleasant, kind of like wistaria, 0:08:21.280 --> 0:08:23.360 but not as nice, and it might have stayed that 0:08:23.440 --> 0:08:27.960 way if weather and the US government hadn't intervened, and 0:08:28.040 --> 0:08:34.080 the dust Bowl transformed the way people saw the American landscape. 0:08:34.280 --> 0:08:39.360 It it struck the fear of God and the people everywhere. 0:08:39.960 --> 0:08:42.800 During the early nineteen thirties, a severe drought over the 0:08:42.800 --> 0:08:46.520 American Plains caused winds and choking dust to sweep the 0:08:46.559 --> 0:08:49.760 region from the south up to Nebraska. Farmers were having 0:08:49.840 --> 0:08:52.880 a real struggle. They were moving all over the place 0:08:52.960 --> 0:08:57.160 trying to find some new land that worked. Georgia's fields 0:08:57.280 --> 0:09:01.520 had been farmed so hard, the Carolinas had been farmed 0:09:01.559 --> 0:09:06.640 so hard. Alabama was just being whipped again and again. 0:09:07.320 --> 0:09:11.960 People were desperate. They were looking for solutions anywhere, and 0:09:12.000 --> 0:09:15.120 Franklin Delano Roosevelt had a good one when he became 0:09:15.120 --> 0:09:19.160 president in nree When Roosevelt came into office, one of 0:09:19.200 --> 0:09:23.240 his big campaigns was to was to overcome the problems 0:09:23.280 --> 0:09:25.920 of the dust bowl UH and the barrenness of the 0:09:26.000 --> 0:09:29.640 dust Bowl, to stop erosion at all costs. Roosevelt and 0:09:29.720 --> 0:09:34.800 Congress created a new organization, the Civilian Conservation Corps. Five 0:09:34.880 --> 0:09:38.080 days after the law was signed, twenty five thousand men 0:09:38.200 --> 0:09:40.959 signed up to work for the c c C. Young 0:09:41.080 --> 0:09:44.040 Gun citizen who arrived at Camp Flaby of arm and 0:09:44.200 --> 0:09:47.319 copy of mine is now tough of the hickory nut. 0:09:48.080 --> 0:09:51.360 The c CC eventually employed more than three million. It 0:09:51.440 --> 0:09:54.880 was Roosevelt's most popular New Deal program. I wish that 0:09:54.960 --> 0:09:56.839 I could take a couple of months off from the 0:09:56.920 --> 0:09:59.160 White House and come down here and live with them, 0:09:59.200 --> 0:10:01.079 because I know I get full of health the whare 0:10:01.160 --> 0:10:04.320 they have. The c c C started a massive plan 0:10:04.400 --> 0:10:07.920 to stabilize American soil, and they had a secret weapon, 0:10:08.280 --> 0:10:11.199 a plant they called the miracle vine. Because of its 0:10:11.200 --> 0:10:14.640 ability to flourish in difficult environments and to grow rapidly 0:10:15.280 --> 0:10:18.360 kad zoo. Some of their folks realized, well, it's you know, 0:10:18.480 --> 0:10:23.080 it is a great fodder. It can cover ground fairly 0:10:23.200 --> 0:10:27.280 well once it gets established, And so the US government 0:10:27.320 --> 0:10:33.360 started producing millions, literally millions of starts of kad zoo. 0:10:33.800 --> 0:10:36.560 More than seventy million kud zoo seedlings were grown in 0:10:36.640 --> 0:10:39.959 government run nurseries. Farmers were paid as much as eight 0:10:40.000 --> 0:10:42.920 dollars per acre to plant the vine. But it wasn't 0:10:42.960 --> 0:10:45.400 just the dust Bowl where kad zoo came in Handy 0:10:45.640 --> 0:10:48.600 railroads and highways were being built all across the United 0:10:48.640 --> 0:10:52.760 States at the time, and the railroads and the highway builders, 0:10:53.400 --> 0:10:56.720 we're creating their own kind of barren landscapes as they 0:10:56.760 --> 0:10:59.000 built these railroads and highways through the middle of the 0:10:59.040 --> 0:11:02.880 woods that were no vegetation covering the causeways and the 0:11:03.320 --> 0:11:06.040 and the embankments that they were creating along these highways, 0:11:06.040 --> 0:11:08.320 and they needed something to cover it quickly, and so 0:11:08.440 --> 0:11:11.520 they planted kud zoo all along the highways and railways, 0:11:11.880 --> 0:11:19.440 especially in the South, and Kudzoo finally finally came into 0:11:19.480 --> 0:11:24.520 its own along those highways and railroads because there were 0:11:24.520 --> 0:11:26.880 no cows to eat it, there were no horses to 0:11:26.920 --> 0:11:30.040 eat it. So once you planted it, it continued growing 0:11:30.320 --> 0:11:33.800 and grew and grew and grew, and alongside that growth 0:11:34.160 --> 0:11:38.080 something else sprouted a legend. So many of the South 0:11:38.200 --> 0:11:41.240 highways and so many of the railroads were planted in 0:11:41.320 --> 0:11:45.559 kud Zoo and h that had a really interesting effect 0:11:45.800 --> 0:11:52.240 because suddenly people's view of the Southern landscape it was 0:11:52.280 --> 0:11:55.840 what they saw at their car windows. It seemed like 0:11:55.960 --> 0:11:59.880 Kudzoo was everywhere, and that's when the myth making began. 0:12:00.000 --> 0:12:03.560 In Kudzoo really did grab hold of the popular imagination 0:12:03.840 --> 0:12:08.280 but by the nineteen forties and nineteen fifties and sixties, 0:12:08.400 --> 0:12:12.000 a new generation of Southern riders they actually began writing 0:12:12.040 --> 0:12:17.600 about kutzoo. James Dickey, Um, who wrote the novel Deliverance, 0:12:18.280 --> 0:12:23.480 had a very famous form about kut Zoo. Yes that Deliverance. 0:12:26.200 --> 0:12:29.560 Seven years before he wrote Deliverance, Dickie published a poem 0:12:29.559 --> 0:12:32.640 in The New Yorker called Kudzoo. It reads like a 0:12:32.679 --> 0:12:36.680 Southern version of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land in Georgia. 0:12:36.760 --> 0:12:39.880 The legend says that you must close your windows at 0:12:40.000 --> 0:12:43.160 night to keep it out of the house. The glass 0:12:43.320 --> 0:12:47.680 is tinged with green, even so as the tendrils crawl 0:12:47.840 --> 0:12:51.559 over the fields the night, the kud zoo has your pasture, 0:12:52.120 --> 0:12:58.040 you sleep like the dead. And it's clearly meant to 0:12:58.080 --> 0:13:01.080 be outrageous, but people took it seriously. It was about 0:13:01.679 --> 0:13:06.600 kad zoo covering houses and and kad zoo invading people's lives, 0:13:06.600 --> 0:13:10.160 and it's sort of caught the essence of of of 0:13:10.160 --> 0:13:12.760 of how people feared kud zoo and what it was 0:13:12.760 --> 0:13:15.680 going to do the landscape. James Dickey called kud zoo 0:13:15.840 --> 0:13:19.880 quote a vegetal form of cancer. Some of his invaded 0:13:19.920 --> 0:13:23.440 Southern compatriots. On the other hand, they began to identify 0:13:23.679 --> 0:13:30.599 with their captor, and eventually Southerners adopted kad Zoo is 0:13:30.720 --> 0:13:32.920 kind of a pet idea. They would come up with 0:13:32.960 --> 0:13:39.560 ideas for let's name our restaurant after Kudzoo, let's name's 0:13:39.640 --> 0:13:44.960 let's name our our website after Kudzoo. There there businesses 0:13:45.000 --> 0:13:48.560 all across the South named for kud Zoo. Because of 0:13:48.600 --> 0:13:52.040 this outgrowth of popularity, in some ways, the mythic reach 0:13:52.080 --> 0:13:54.720 of kad Zoo became more important to the South than 0:13:54.760 --> 0:13:57.679 the vine itself. It was far more part of our 0:13:59.120 --> 0:14:02.880 social culture. Sure, it was far more part of our 0:14:02.920 --> 0:14:05.880 speech in our language than it was part of the landscape. 0:14:06.280 --> 0:14:08.760 But while the mystic version of kud Zoo has indeed 0:14:08.840 --> 0:14:12.280 swallowed the South, the actual Vian script is far more 0:14:12.320 --> 0:14:27.160 tenuous and more complicated. Do you have an interesting tale 0:14:27.200 --> 0:14:31.280 about unintended consequences from history or your own life. Please 0:14:31.280 --> 0:14:34.720 share with us by emailing flashback at Aussie dot com. 0:14:34.720 --> 0:14:53.320 That's flashback at o z y dot com. We'll return 0:14:53.360 --> 0:14:55.560 in a moment to kud Zoo and our tale of 0:14:55.680 --> 0:14:58.320 vegetal cancer. But first I want to tell you about 0:14:58.360 --> 0:15:02.920 another invasive species deflowering America, one that is also tied 0:15:02.960 --> 0:15:06.360 to the eight seventy six World's Fair. Seemed to be 0:15:06.600 --> 0:15:10.960 everywhere moths taking over backyards and front doors. The problem 0:15:10.960 --> 0:15:13.680 is so bad that a swarm of moths actually delayed 0:15:13.720 --> 0:15:17.240 a Jet Blue flight yesterday. So that's right. A few 0:15:17.320 --> 0:15:20.400 years ago, a flight at Logan International Airport in Boston 0:15:20.640 --> 0:15:23.880 was delayed for more than twenty minutes for an unusual reason, 0:15:24.360 --> 0:15:28.200 a swarm of gypsy moths. The problem went well beyond 0:15:28.240 --> 0:15:30.960 the airport. They're kind of like, really nasty and clothes. 0:15:31.200 --> 0:15:33.400 Never seen as many moths as I've seen in the 0:15:33.480 --> 0:15:36.520 last couple of days. Moths. A plague of gypsy moths 0:15:36.560 --> 0:15:39.720 already afflicts many parts of the northeastern US during the 0:15:39.760 --> 0:15:42.680 summer months, and it's only going to get worse as 0:15:42.680 --> 0:15:46.360 they continue to spread to new places and in greater numbers. 0:15:46.800 --> 0:15:50.200 So why this moth invasion, Well, the head of the 0:15:50.240 --> 0:15:56.040 state's forestry health program blames several years of unusually dry weather. 0:15:56.360 --> 0:15:58.320 That's true about the dry weather, But do you know 0:15:58.360 --> 0:16:05.600 who I blame at Tienne Leopold Trouvolo. One fifty years 0:16:05.600 --> 0:16:08.520 ago there wasn't a single gypsy moth in North America, 0:16:08.800 --> 0:16:11.720 not one. But it only took a single man and 0:16:11.800 --> 0:16:15.800 an unfortunate accident to change all that forever. Just the 0:16:15.920 --> 0:16:18.960 side of them can make your skin crawl. They're gypsy 0:16:19.040 --> 0:16:23.720 moth caterpillars and they're chopping through tree foliage in forest backyards. 0:16:23.960 --> 0:16:25.840 I jumped off my bike. I was covered from head 0:16:25.880 --> 0:16:29.680 to toe. Even on college campuses, gypsy moth caterpillars show 0:16:29.760 --> 0:16:32.080 up in late April, about the time that oak trees 0:16:32.120 --> 0:16:35.720 start to butt out. They can decimate trees and foliage, 0:16:36.000 --> 0:16:38.840 and in some areas of the country they're slimy droppings, 0:16:38.840 --> 0:16:42.440 coat roofs, decks, and sheds. It's a mess one that 0:16:42.480 --> 0:16:45.600 really started back in the eighteen sixties with the blowback 0:16:45.640 --> 0:16:52.440 from the pursuit of another smooth substance, silk. Silk was 0:16:52.480 --> 0:16:55.960 a hot commodity in the nineteenth century. The aristocracy of 0:16:56.000 --> 0:16:59.440 Europe couldn't get enough of it, and so silkworms were 0:16:59.440 --> 0:17:03.520 in hide manned with silkworms. If you reel the silk 0:17:03.600 --> 0:17:06.879 and wolve the silk and sold the silk uh you 0:17:07.000 --> 0:17:12.000 would have literally a gold mine. Because silk was so valuable. 0:17:12.160 --> 0:17:15.359 This guy knows all about unintended consequences. By the way, 0:17:15.480 --> 0:17:18.680 my name is Edward Tenor. I'm a historian of technology. 0:17:19.080 --> 0:17:23.800 I study unintended consequences, and since more than fifty of 0:17:23.880 --> 0:17:27.280 reality consists of unintended consequences, I have a lot of 0:17:27.320 --> 0:17:30.000 work to do. Tennor wrote a book called Why Things 0:17:30.119 --> 0:17:32.639 Bite Back, and the story of the Gypsy moth is 0:17:32.680 --> 0:17:35.439 a good example of why they do. One of the 0:17:35.560 --> 0:17:40.560 big fads in America in the nineteenth century was the 0:17:40.600 --> 0:17:47.359 search for an American silk industry. People believe that the 0:17:47.440 --> 0:17:51.359 Republic should not be spending all this money importing silk 0:17:51.440 --> 0:17:54.840 from Europe and from China. We really should be cultivating 0:17:54.880 --> 0:17:58.439 it here. After a great silkworm plague, yes that was 0:17:58.480 --> 0:18:01.560 a thing, ravaged Europe in the mid eighteen hundreds, the 0:18:01.640 --> 0:18:05.199 search for a silkworm alternative in America heated up. Some 0:18:05.280 --> 0:18:08.960 of the nation's greatest minds took up the potentially lucrative challenge. 0:18:09.520 --> 0:18:16.800 Chen Leopold Trouvalo was a French astronomer who became a 0:18:16.800 --> 0:18:23.080 political exile. And if Trouvelo had not become infamous as 0:18:23.200 --> 0:18:26.080 the man who would introduced the gypsy molets, he would 0:18:26.080 --> 0:18:30.480 be really famous as an astronomer, and Truvalu was mostly 0:18:30.520 --> 0:18:34.320 an astronomer and a World's Fair caliber artist, But he 0:18:34.440 --> 0:18:39.639 had a sideline that proved faithful for the American forest. 0:18:40.400 --> 0:18:48.600 He was experimenting with uh organisms that could replace the silkworm. 0:18:48.640 --> 0:18:52.159 Trouvelo had a million caterpillars of various species feeding behind 0:18:52.240 --> 0:18:55.840 his house in Medford, Massachusetts. To keep them contained, his 0:18:55.920 --> 0:18:59.119 property was encircled by an eight foot wooden fence and 0:18:59.240 --> 0:19:03.120 covered by net. It was hard work raising caterpillars. They 0:19:03.160 --> 0:19:06.880 required constant feedings, Their platforms had to be swept three 0:19:06.920 --> 0:19:10.080 times a day. Birds had to be constantly fought off, 0:19:10.720 --> 0:19:14.600 but Trouvelo continued his quest for the next silkworm. Trouvelo 0:19:15.040 --> 0:19:20.720 believed that the gypsy moss might be a good candidate, 0:19:20.800 --> 0:19:24.840 even though it was already recognized in Europe as something 0:19:24.880 --> 0:19:28.800 of a pest. Trouvelo started raising gypsy moth caterpillars in 0:19:28.880 --> 0:19:32.199 eight sixty eight, but even their best silk was coarse 0:19:32.280 --> 0:19:36.600 and ragged. It was disappointing, but a severe windstorm made 0:19:36.640 --> 0:19:42.280 things much worse. The storm knocked over some of Trouvelou's 0:19:42.320 --> 0:19:46.480 netting in cages scattering gypsy moth eggs into the countryside. 0:19:46.840 --> 0:19:52.000 There were some mots that uh that escaped, and there 0:19:52.240 --> 0:19:55.920 was a growing road traffic. This was before the automobile, 0:19:55.960 --> 0:19:58.800 but America had had an awful lot of road traffic 0:19:58.880 --> 0:20:04.480 before automobiles. Americans were taking many more crips in the 0:20:04.600 --> 0:20:08.800 horse and buggy days too, and these wagons, especially in 0:20:08.880 --> 0:20:14.000 the suburbs of Boston, were carrying the these moths all 0:20:14.040 --> 0:20:17.840 around New England, from buggies to trolley cars, to trains 0:20:17.840 --> 0:20:21.480 and automobiles. Gypsy moth eggs spread across the nation as 0:20:21.520 --> 0:20:27.320 Americans themselves grew more mobile. It proved impossible to eradicate them. 0:20:27.320 --> 0:20:31.080 The problem was recognized, but it was really too late, 0:20:31.359 --> 0:20:36.400 and so the spread just continue a decade after decade, 0:20:36.680 --> 0:20:40.040 and the caterpillar still blaze the destructive path today. This 0:20:40.119 --> 0:20:43.240 is Denise dot She's a database manager for the Gypsy 0:20:43.280 --> 0:20:47.200 moth Slow the Spread program. They are defoliators of oak 0:20:47.520 --> 0:20:51.879 and hardwood forests. The caterpillars, if they are in a 0:20:51.960 --> 0:20:55.320 high enough population density, will actually eat all of the 0:20:55.400 --> 0:20:58.840 leaves off of a tree. Since nineteen seventy, the gypsy 0:20:58.840 --> 0:21:02.600 moths defoliated more than eighty million acres in the United States, 0:21:03.200 --> 0:21:06.520 not at all what Truvillo or anyone else intended, but 0:21:06.600 --> 0:21:10.520 it's a consequence millions live with today. Up next, how 0:21:10.560 --> 0:21:13.240 bad are the kud Zoo and gypsy moth epidemics really 0:21:13.560 --> 0:21:15.800 and what can we learn from them? We also talk 0:21:15.880 --> 0:21:17.879 to a researcher who believes that one of kud Zoo's 0:21:17.920 --> 0:21:43.280 greatest unintended consequences might still be yet to come. Enjoying 0:21:43.320 --> 0:21:46.880 this episode, check out the Great Courses Plus streaming service. 0:21:47.160 --> 0:21:49.600 It's an excellent resource to expand our knowledge on a 0:21:49.680 --> 0:21:53.600 variety of subjects. In researching this episode of Flashback, I 0:21:53.720 --> 0:21:57.760 dove deep into the lectures understanding cultural and human geography 0:21:58.160 --> 0:22:01.920 and anthropology and the studea of humanity. With the Great 0:22:01.920 --> 0:22:05.520 Courses Plus app, we can keep our minds active, escape 0:22:05.520 --> 0:22:09.120 into this vast world of information. Watch or listen at 0:22:09.160 --> 0:22:13.439 any time anywhere. Right now, they're giving our listeners a 0:22:13.480 --> 0:22:17.480 special limited time offer, a free month of unlimited access 0:22:17.520 --> 0:22:21.160 to their entire library. Sign up now through our special 0:22:21.280 --> 0:22:24.520 U r L go to the Great Courses Plus dot 0:22:24.520 --> 0:22:28.760 com slash ausy. That's the Great Courses Plus dot com 0:22:29.200 --> 0:22:33.440 slash o z y The Great Courses plus dot com 0:22:33.680 --> 0:22:39.800 slash Aussi kat zoo has become the bad boy of 0:22:39.840 --> 0:22:43.160 invasive plant species, the one that makes local news stories 0:22:43.160 --> 0:22:48.040 and inspires poetry. Back Congress officially listed the vine as 0:22:48.040 --> 0:22:51.119 a noxious weed, and it is still illegal to plant 0:22:51.160 --> 0:22:54.639 in some states. But how pervasive is kad zoo really? 0:22:55.119 --> 0:22:59.639 It's a funny thing. Vines in the South all grow 0:23:00.119 --> 0:23:03.240 very fast, and that's an important context. That's our kud 0:23:03.280 --> 0:23:06.240 zoo expert Bill Finch. Again, the rate of growth of 0:23:06.359 --> 0:23:09.159 kud zoo is nothing compared to the right of growth 0:23:09.200 --> 0:23:13.639 of a lot of other vines, Asian wistaria probably is 0:23:13.840 --> 0:23:17.520 uh is this bigger problem, if not a much bigger 0:23:17.600 --> 0:23:21.680 problem than kudzoo itself. For a long time, says Finch. 0:23:21.920 --> 0:23:24.280 Scientists and the media claim that kud zoo might cover 0:23:24.320 --> 0:23:28.040 as many as nine million acres of the southeastern United States, 0:23:28.480 --> 0:23:31.000 but more recent research by the U. S. Forest Service 0:23:31.240 --> 0:23:36.600 finds otherwise. And it wasn't nine million acres, it wasn't 0:23:36.680 --> 0:23:41.880 eight million acres, it wasn't seven million acres. Turns out, 0:23:41.960 --> 0:23:45.560 when they actually did an inventory out of two hundred 0:23:45.640 --> 0:23:49.760 million acres of forest land in the Southeast, kud zoo 0:23:49.920 --> 0:23:53.160 only covered a little more than two hundred thousand acres. 0:23:53.760 --> 0:23:58.359 That's less than one tenth of one per cent of 0:23:58.400 --> 0:24:01.880 the forest land in the southeast. So why does kat 0:24:01.920 --> 0:24:04.920 zoo feel so much worse than it is. Finch claims 0:24:04.960 --> 0:24:06.600 that kudzu is not so much the king of the 0:24:06.640 --> 0:24:09.600 forest but of the roadside. And that is why so 0:24:09.640 --> 0:24:12.560 many Southerners like myself, who grew up looking at a 0:24:12.600 --> 0:24:17.359 car window, became so enamored by and concerned with the vine. 0:24:17.720 --> 0:24:21.200 We began spending all of our loss driving along roadsides. 0:24:21.200 --> 0:24:23.280 It was how we understood the landscape. It was how 0:24:23.320 --> 0:24:26.359 most of us were exposed to the landscape was was 0:24:26.400 --> 0:24:30.359 framed in our car windows. So kut zoo seemed like 0:24:30.400 --> 0:24:34.760 a much bigger threat than it actually was. In other words, 0:24:34.920 --> 0:24:37.359 kudzu was not the vine that ate the South. It 0:24:37.440 --> 0:24:39.160 was the vine that ate the part of the South 0:24:39.240 --> 0:24:43.040 that we could see. Still, the desk Bowl Air decision 0:24:43.080 --> 0:24:45.879 to plant kut zoo, the so called miracle vine and 0:24:46.000 --> 0:24:49.639 massive numbers, continues to impact us in other ways today. 0:24:50.600 --> 0:24:53.400 But here's the other problem with kutzo. There's a thing 0:24:53.400 --> 0:24:56.200 called the kudzu bug. Have you seen these? They're creepy 0:24:56.400 --> 0:24:59.800 Crawley downright annoying, and some folks in the Upstates say 0:24:59.840 --> 0:25:04.000 they are overwhelmed by kazoo bugs. Kudzoo bugs look like 0:25:04.119 --> 0:25:07.760 dark brown beetles with a round shell, like stink bugs. 0:25:08.480 --> 0:25:11.520 They're harmless to people, but they travel in large packs. 0:25:11.880 --> 0:25:14.439 Tavis Graham says when he walked out of his house Monday, 0:25:14.520 --> 0:25:18.600 kudzoo bugs swarmed him. The entire house is covered. Everything 0:25:18.680 --> 0:25:22.199 this white, you know of our white siding, The doors, windows, 0:25:22.640 --> 0:25:26.600 they're covered. They're going inside the windows. Kudzoo bugs also 0:25:26.640 --> 0:25:29.679 come from Asia, but far more recently. It's believed they 0:25:29.760 --> 0:25:32.440 arrived not at the World's Fair but via the Atlanta 0:25:32.480 --> 0:25:36.160 Airport about a decade ago, without a ticket or any bags. 0:25:36.720 --> 0:25:40.680 But they are already overstaying there welcome. While kudzu bugs 0:25:40.680 --> 0:25:42.879 helped keep kat zoo in check, they also like to 0:25:42.920 --> 0:25:45.720 eat soybeans, which could have some serious consequences in the 0:25:45.800 --> 0:25:55.919 future for soybean farmers across the South. Speaking of creepy bugs, 0:25:56.000 --> 0:25:58.840 the gypsy moth caterpillar also promises to be a problem 0:25:58.880 --> 0:26:02.200 in the future as it continues to colonize North America. 0:26:02.800 --> 0:26:06.720 The niece Dot again is currently moving south and West, 0:26:07.800 --> 0:26:10.320 uh there are parts of Canada that the winters are 0:26:10.359 --> 0:26:14.520 just too cold for it to survive. Likewise, it will, 0:26:15.160 --> 0:26:18.240 we think, reach a point in the south and so 0:26:18.320 --> 0:26:21.959 where Georgia Florida, where the summers are just too hot, 0:26:22.960 --> 0:26:27.240 and that will also affect survival. Programs like dogs have 0:26:27.280 --> 0:26:31.320 indeed slowed that spread and helped manage caterpillar outbreaks. But 0:26:31.400 --> 0:26:33.800 the best way of slowing the gypsy moth might be 0:26:33.840 --> 0:26:37.280