Native Range: Kudzu is found throughout Asia, including China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. 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. Currently they have spread through several southeastern states, including North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. Kudzu sat dormant for several years as a game design document that I told myself I’d someday get to (an early version of Max can be found in the lower-left corner of … (Pueraria lobata, or P. thunbergiana), twining perennial vine that is a member of a genus belonging to the family Leguminosae. Apply a second dose of herbicide in late summer. 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. You will … It was planted with the idea that it could be a solution for soil erosion, but its aggressive spread has proven to be a growing problem rather than an ecological solution, and it's considered an invasive species in the South. But its mythic rise and fall should alert us to the careless secondhand way we sometimes view the living world, and how much more we might see if we just looked a little deeper. Our species profiles include selected highly relevant resources for the species (organized by source), and access to all species related resources included on our site. Invasive roses had covered more than three times as much forestland as kudzu. By 1945, only a little more than a million acres had been planted, and much of it was quickly grazed out or plowed under after federal payments stopped. By 2010 the first signs of kudzu bugs were in Alabama. 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. Other names: Kudzu, Pueraria montana Where did it come from? Even existing stands of kudzu now exude the odor of their own demise, an acrid sweetness reminiscent of grape bubble gum and stink bug. The Japanese government constructed a beautiful garden filled with plants from their country. Farmers still couldn’t find a way to make money from the crop. 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. Swearingen J, Reshetiloff K, Slattery B, Zwicker S. 2002. or Revegetation of sites following treatment is an important last step to ensure that any residual kudzu does not reestablish. Thirty years younger Kudzu is a perennial climbing vine native to eastern Asia that was recently found in Leamington, Ontario. When you attempt to hand-pull or dig out th… 17th Annual Photo Contest Finalists Announced. You will … It grows quickly over other small plants, trees, and on to structures like telephone poles. Kudzu (Pueraria lobata) is an invasive vine that was introduced to the U.S. from Japan and distributed throughout the South for erosion control. Plant Control:Mature patches of Kudzu can be difficult to contain let alone control. (Pueraria lobata, or P. thunbergiana), twining perennial vine that is a member of a genus belonging to the family Leguminosae. But it did not become the plant that’s eating America all by itself. Get the best of Smithsonian magazine by email. By way of comparison, the same report estimates that Asian privet had invaded some 3.2 million acres—14 times kudzu’s territory. Kudzu Origin Kudzu was introduced from Japan to the United States at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876 as an ornamental and a forage crop plant. Introduced from Asia in the late 19th century as a garden novelty, but not widely planted until the 1930s, kudzu is now America’s most infamous weed. Cope spoke of kudzu in religious terms: Kudzu, he proclaimed on his Depression-era broadcasts, would make barren Southern farms “live again.” There were hundreds of thousands of acres in the South “waiting for the healing touch of the miracle vine.”. Perhaps it was while I watched horses and cows mowing fields of kudzu down to brown stubs. Kudzu is a perennial climbing vine native to eastern Asia that was recently found in Leamington, Ontario. In the decades that followed kudzu’s formal introduction at the 1876 World’s Fair Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, farmers found little use for a vine that could take years to establish, was nearly impossible to harvest and couldn’t tolerate sustained grazing by horses or cattle. Continue Posted Date: January 1, 2000 Cut the Vines. 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. While you can find kudzu vine almost anywhere in the South by taking a drive on a country road, kudzu root is probably most popular by way of a supplement or as kudzu root tea that can be found at most health fo… There is a spot of yellow on each stem of flowers. A Faster Way to Get Rid of Kudzu . Cut the Vines. Southern Journal of Applied Forestry. Here are a few kudzu bug characteristics: Though fascinated by the grape-scented flowers and the purple honey produced by visiting bees, I trembled at the monstrous green forms climbing telephone poles and trees on the edges of our roads and towns. It is also native to the south Pacific region, including Australia, Fiji, New Caledonia, Solomon Islands, Tonga, and Vanuatu. 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. “The Vine that ate the South” is no longer just a southern problem either. By the early 1950s, the Soil Conservation Service was quietly back-pedaling on its big kudzu push. Native Range: Kudzu is found throughout Asia, including China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. Kudzu, an invasive vine that is spreading across the southeastern United States and northward, is a major contributor to large-scale increases of the pollutant surface ozone, according to a … Kudzu was introduced from Japan to the United States at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876 as an ornamental and a forage crop plant. The U.S. government did its best to spread kudzu throughout the South. They were first sighted in Georgia in 2009 and are suspected to originate from Asia. Repeated applications are usually required to kill every root crown. The U.S. government did its best to spread kudzu throughout the South. For the generations of writers who followed, many no longer intimately connected to the land, kudzu served as a shorthand for describing the Southern landscape and experience, a ready way of identifying the place, the writer, the effort as genuinely Southern. What we know as kudzu (Pueraria montana) was brought from Asia to the U.S. in the late 19th century. 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