Unless you are a famished hiker on the Appalachian Trail, chances are you have not given much thought to how the forest tastes. Plant flavor is an important area of study for ecologists examining invasive plants. A common theory holds that the success of kudzu and other exotic species is due to foreign biochemistry that makes them repugnant to native herbivores. In a new study published in PLoS ONE, scientists at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Md., have cast doubt on this popular but little-tested idea.
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