I think the vines in the second photo are kudzu tho

Too big to fail

Kudzu was the last bioweapons unit of the Union army in the US civil war. It never surrendered, it is still fighting the American South, and winning the guerilla war.

I'll leave this here, as I'm particularly bothered by the weird megamyth of kudzu in the US, as is evidenced but the other comments.

English ivy is actually a generally bigger threat but it never gets any real attention.

I will concede that the image above is kudzu tho.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/true-story-kudzu-vine-ate-south-180956325/

Playing whack a mole with my neighbours ivy. Keeps popping up on my side of the fence. Fuck whoever brought it to Australia.

What I don't get is why we don't eat kudzu.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kudzu

Kudzu CONSUME

Nah it’s pretty intent on covering the whole of England too tbh. Good for the bees in September tho ☺️

Kudzu is Chinese arrowroot tho?

~~Science~~ uninformed memes

Apart from what others commented on these being two entirely different species, there might be other factors at play as well.

Lianas and vines are pretty common and very diverse, especially in tropical forests. They are usually found as part of the upper canopy and if there is a tree fall, they manage to fill this gap pretty quickly. The trees grow more slowly, but will manage to establish themselves eventually, filling up that gap. But if you cut down an entire forest, trees have a much harder time to establish themselves because the whole ground is just covered in these fast growing lianas or vines. There are studies that look at exactly that, how lianas inhibit forest regrowth.

So, how overgrown with lianas or vines a certain habitat is, is very much dependent on the disturbance of this habitat.

Verbascum thapsus in Europe (nice medicinal plant):

Why? Climate differences?