how ivy, poison ivy, Virginia creeper, any other fast growing vine or plant, don’t take over an entire area and destroy a forest?
In: Biology
Native species usually have native predators (well, herbivores) in the area that act to control their population. After all, if something becomes super common in an environment, it represents a big untapped food source. Additionally, local plants are likely to be adapted to deal with it because anything that just gets overgrown won’t survive.
If you introduce species (like, say, Kudzu) from somewhere else, though, then they can expand to take over an entire area because they lack these balancing forces.. Although your standard yellow honeysuckle isn’t actually native, but invasive species don’t always overgrow everything like kudzu. Kudzu in particular is good at growing really long vines from a large central tuber, honeysuckle usually can’t really get way up in trees.
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