{"id":5836,"date":"2023-05-30T08:30:13","date_gmt":"2023-05-30T12:30:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.christensensplantcenter.com\/news\/?p=5836"},"modified":"2023-06-01T10:49:49","modified_gmt":"2023-06-01T14:49:49","slug":"kudzu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.christensensplantcenter.com\/news\/kudzu\/","title":{"rendered":"Kudzu \u2013 The Invasive Vine that Ate the South (or did it?)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Being from the North and a country music fan, I started hearing about Kudzu in songs by HARDY, Morgan Wallen, Alabama, Scotty McCreery and more. You can\u2019t get far into country music before an artist compares something to the invasiveness of a Kudzu vine. My favorite being \u201cMy mama said addiction runs like a kudzu vine on our family tree\u2026\u201d Being in horticulture, I had to investigate this mythical beast of a plant and learn more about it.<\/p>\n

Kudzu, or if we\u2019re being scientific, Pueraria montana, was introduced at the 1876 World\u2019s Fair Centennial Exhibition. Originally from Asia, it didn\u2019t really make a splash with Americans.  Farmers couldn\u2019t figure out how to leverage the plant for any sort of profit and it was quickly gobbled up by grazing by livestock. It wouldn\u2019t have actually taken off, if it wasn\u2019t for a supplemented government program. It\u2019s estimated that around 1945, there were about a million acres planted. That was a far cry from the 8 million acres the government hoped would be planted and the incentivization ended. <\/p>\n

While the Kudzu on farms was plowed under or grazed away, the Kudzu on roadsides and railways grew to cover much of all the other vegetation, seemingly consuming the south at a rapid pace, up to a foot per day. This very visible conquest became the easy target of writers, poets and lyricists. This plant has taken on a cultural reference far surpassing most other southern plants. It has wrapped around the people to become an icon.<\/p>\n

\"Kudzu<\/span><\/p>\n

But in the end this plant doesn\u2019t live up to the myth that\u2019s been created around it. Horticulturists agree that it poses less of a threat than Asian privet, Japanese honeysuckle and invasive roses in the south. It does not grow inches in days and cover millions of acres. The U.S Forest service reports that in 2010 only 227,000 acres of forests are invaded by Kudzu. It sounds like a lot, but when you consider that over 1 million acres of the US are covered with Purple Loosestrife, you can see that it\u2019s not nearly the problem we face from a local invasive species.<\/p>\n

\"Kudzu<\/span><\/p>\n

And some horticulturists even think it\u2019s on the decline. It\u2019s certainly debatable, but as many farming corporations, universities and the government have been attacking it with herbicides, mowers, fires, goats and replanting, it is possible that they are starting to get a handle on the spread. Another factor is the Japanese kudzu bug that has begun infesting large areas of kudzu and sucking the life out of the myth.<\/p>\n

\"Japanese<\/span><\/p>\n

When traveling near Gatlinburg, Tennessee last year, I was able to see the monster for myself. It was certainly an overwhelming site on the side of the road creating a jungle-like look for expanses of the highway. I would never want to battle this vine in my yard. It was always assumed that Kudzu was contained by the cool temperatures of the north, but a recent study indicated that it can survive in subzero conditions. And with climates shifting and zones redefining, it\u2019s actually getting closer to the northern states and the Midwest by the year.  The romantic version of the plant in songs, poems and stories is a lot more palatable when it stays far away from my yard.<\/p>\n

But whether you love it or hate it, at least you may know more about Kudzu than you did before. If you\u2019re looking for additional information and articles, this is where I pulled the majority of my research from:<\/p>\n

\"Kudzu<\/span><\/a>The True Story of Kudzu, the Vine That Never Truly Ate the South by Bill Finch<\/a><\/p>\n

Kudzu\u2019s Entanglement of South Begins to Unravel by Dan Chapman<\/a><\/a>WorldWideScience.org<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Marci<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Being from the North and a country music fan, I started hearing about Kudzu in songs by HARDY, Morgan Wallen, Alabama, Scotty McCreery and more. You can\u2019t get far into country music before an artist compares something to the invasiveness of a Kudzu vine. My favorite being \u201cMy mama said addiction runs like a kudzu […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":5842,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[103,82,6],"tags":[91],"class_list":["post-5836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2023-posts","category-habitat","category-plants","tag-marci-mcintosh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christensensplantcenter.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christensensplantcenter.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christensensplantcenter.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christensensplantcenter.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christensensplantcenter.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5836"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.christensensplantcenter.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5836\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6025,"href":"https:\/\/www.christensensplantcenter.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5836\/revisions\/6025"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christensensplantcenter.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christensensplantcenter.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christensensplantcenter.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christensensplantcenter.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}