The Plant That Ate the South

Not long after our daughter married, we were touring around the state acclimating our new son-in-law with the area that his wife called home.  The scenic drive to various spots of interest included a lot of small, winding roads.  Iowa is so straight that I suspect our passenger was feeling a little green on the endless curves.  Rounding one particularly tight curve we exited into a surreal landscape right out of a sci-fi movie.  A green curtain blanketed both sides of the road, covering trees, shrubs, road signs, and even telephone poles, with tendrils creeping across the lines themselves.  It was like a wall of oddly shaped, deep green, impenetrable growth.  With a start, my son-in-law inquired, "What IS that!!" 

"That, son," I replied, "is the plant that ate the South."

Kudzu.  The science experiment that went terribly wrong.  Like the plant in "Little Shop of Horrors" it just keeps yelling "FEED ME!" then devouring everything in its path.

The plant actually came from China by way of Japan at the end of the 19th century.  It was introduced as an ornamental vine at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876.  It was marketed widely throughout the southeast as a plant to be used to shade porches.  In just a few years the Soil Erosion Service was recommending its use to help control erosion on slopes.  It did an admirable job on both fronts.  The only problem was keeping it from covering the whole house not just the porch or the entire field not just the slope.  The government got into the act and actually paid farmers to plant kudzu as a high protein fodder and cover crop.  By 1946 it was estimated that over 3 million acres of kudzu had been planted!  Little did they know that we would spend the rest of our lives trying to get rid of it!

Today there is an estimated 7,400,000 acres covered by kudzu.  It continues to consume the south at a rate of about 120,000 acres a year, destroying fences, trees, barns, houses, power lines, fields and any stationary object in its path.  Kudzu can grow up to 60 feet in a season or about one foot a day.  To make it more fun, anywhere a stem of kudzu touches the ground it can root and become a whole new plant.

Not only is it incredibly fast growing but it is almost impossible to kill.  It takes huge quantities of herbicides to damage it and it must be treated for years to actually kill it off.  Biological methods were studied but any weevil or insect that would damage the kudzu would also damage crops.  (At least the powers-that-be checked before just introducing a whole new problem!)  To date the best control is to let goats and llamas feed on it.  A small herd can reduce an acre of kudzu every day. 

It's hard to believe that a plant can grow like this does.  However I have seen first hand how quickly it can move.  My daughter and I parked our car at a motel in Gatlinburg that backed up to a mountainside covered with kudzu.  The parking spot was sided by a rock wall, which I parked beside.  The next afternoon when we went to move the car I discovered the kudzu had come over the wall and was actually inside the back door!  Creepy!

My father's homeplace had kudzu planted on the back porch to provide shade.  He remembered that every morning the first person out would have to break the door open because the vine would have grown over the door during the night.

My son-in-law gazed in wonder at the green covered landscape.  Coming straight from the cultivated farmland of Iowa with its neat fields and controlled crops, I'm sure he had trouble believing what he was seeing. 

I've seen it for years and I still have trouble believing it myself.