Uses for Kudzu Plants. Still, along Southern roads, the blankets of untouched kudzu create famous spectacles. 17th Annual Photo Contest Finalists Announced. Invasive roses had covered more than three times as much forestland as kudzu. Control can be accomplished by persistent applications of effecti We use cookies to enhance your experience on our website.By continuing to use our website, you are agreeing to our use of cookies. A native of Asia with many culinary and medicinal uses in the East, kudzu was introduced to America in large part in order to fight soil erosion. The more I investigate, the more I recognize that kudzu’s place in the popular imagination reveals as much about the power of American mythmaking, and the distorted way we see the natural world, as it does about the vine’s threat to the countryside. Kudzu, known popularly as the "vine that ate the South," has become one of the most recognizable symbols of the American Southeast. California Do Not Sell My Info Privacy Statement By the early 1940s, Cope had started the Kudzu Club of America, with a membership of 20,000 and a goal of planting eight million acres across the South. The great kudzu invasion all started out with a mistake: The Soil Erosion Service and Civilian Conservation Corp intentionally planted it to control soil erosion in the state of Pennsylvania. Yet the popular myth won a modicum of scientific respectability. 1983. In the dictionary next to the definition of "invasive species," they could show a photo of kudzu. The plant was first brought to North America in 1876 to landscape a garden at the United States Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Bill Finch is the lead horticulture and science advisor to the Mobile Botanical Gardens in Alabama. Even existing stands of kudzu now exude the odor of their own demise, an acrid sweetness reminiscent of grape bubble gum and stink bug. More than 70 million kudzu seedlings were grown in nurseries by the newly created Soil Conservation Service. Kudzu is native to Asia, particularly China, Japan and Korea, and has been used in Eastern medicine for centuries. Kudzu has appeared larger than life because it’s most aggressive when planted along road cuts and railroad embankments—habitats that became front and center in the age of the automobile. In a 1973 article about Mississippi, Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple, wrote that “racism is like that local creeping kudzu vine that swallows whole forests and abandoned houses; if you don’t keep pulling up the roots it will grow back faster than you can destroy it.” The photographs of kudzu-smothered cars and houses that show up repeatedly in documentaries of Southern life evoke intractable poverty and defeat. Its growth is not “sinister,” as Willie Morris, the influential editor of Harper’s Magazine, described in his many stories and memoirs about life in Yazoo City, Mississippi. In Asia kudzu serves as one of the favorite hosts for many species of insects including the nefarious kudzu bug and, until recently, careful inspections and lady luck barred entry of this insect to North America. Posted Date: January 1, 2000 Kudzu was cultivated by civilians who were paid $8 per hour to plant the vine on the top … Introduced in the late nineteenth century from Asia, it now covers more than a quarter million acres in Alabama and more than seven million acres in other southeastern states, swallowing up abandoned buildings and farms. l… Though “not terribly worried” about the threat of kudzu, Loewenstein calls it “a good poster child” for the impact of invasive species precisely because it has been so visible to so many. The Japanese kudzu bug, first found in a garden near Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport six years ago, apparently hitched a plane ride and is now infesting vines throughout the South, sucking the plants’ vital juices. Imported from Japan in the 19th century, promoted by the Soil Conservation Service to stem soil erosion, kudzu morphed in a few decades from an … Kudzu was introduced from Japan to the United States at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876 as an ornamental and a forage crop plant. Kudzu is a perennial climbing vine native to eastern Asia that was recently found in Leamington, Ontario. In news media and scientific accounts and on some government websites, kudzu is typically said to cover seven million to nine million acres across the United States. Plant Control:Mature patches of Kudzu can be difficult to contain let alone control. Kudzu is spreading in the South and control measures are required on large acreages. Kudzu monocultures typically contain thousands of individual plants per acre . Posted Date: January 1, 2000 But in 1935, as dust storms damaged the prairies, Congress declared war on soil erosion and enlisted kudzu as a primary weapon. But it did not become the plant that’s eating America all by itself. Kudzu can be controlled with glyphosate but it may take several years of … It grows quickly over other small plants, trees, and on to structures like telephone poles. All land owners in an infestation area must coopera… What helps Kudzu to thrive is its root system that forms very deep in the soil. Kudzu is most prolific in areas where winters are mild (40 to 60 degrees Fahrenheit (4-16 °C)), summer temperatures rise above 80 degrees Fahrenheit (27 °C), the growing season is long, and annual precipitation is > 40 inches (1,000 mm) [51,66]. Kudzu Flower Photo: The vine produces a long stem of beautiful purple to redish-purple flowers. As you walk closer to the vines you will locate intertwined clusters of them. It’s related to five species in the genus Pueraria (P. montana, P. lobata, P. edulis, P. phaseoloides and P. thomsoni). In 1998, Congress officially listed kudzu under the Federal Noxious Weed Act. Smithsonian Institution, Smithsonian Magazine There is a spot of yellow on each stem of flowers. He was, as cultural geographer Derek Alderman suggests, an evangelist. But scientists reassessing kudzu’s spread have found that it’s nothing like that. It is also native to the south Pacific region, including Australia, Fiji, New Caledonia, Solomon Islands, Tonga, and Vanuatu. Kudzu is a perennial climbing vine native to eastern Asia that was recently found in Leamington, Ontario. The Kudzu vine can grow up to 12 feet in a day and is not slowed down by poor conditions. Like most Southern children, I accepted, almost as a matter of faith, that kudzu grew a mile a minute and that its spread was unstoppable. Many historians believe it was the persuasive power of a popular radio host and Atlanta Constitution columnist named Channing Cope that finally got those seedlings in the ground. www.forestryimages.org. Provides kudzu resources from sources with an interest in the prevention, control, or eradication of invasive species. By 1900 kudzu was available through mail order and sold mainly as an inexpensive livestock forage. Native Range: Kudzu is found throughout Asia, including China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. By way of comparison, the same report estimates that Asian privet had invaded some 3.2 million acres—14 times kudzu’s territory. There is a spot of yellow on each stem of flowers. The miraculous vine that might have saved the South had become, in the eyes of many, a notorious vine bound to consume it. 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