I live in the south, in the land of kudzu, sweet tea and camellia bushes. Kudzu is the poster child for invasive species gone wild. I remember a short story someone wrote in college involving a kudzu vine enveloping a house, and slowly devouring the people inside. I’m pretty sure the author was trying to make some deeper point, but every time I see old houses or buildings covered in kudzu I think about that story. Once we had a garden on friends land, and the spot we planted was down in a bowl surrounded by this fast growing vine. We planted carrots, purple hull peas, tomatoes, cucumbers and all the other regular garden foods. My friends who owned the land wanted to learn to garden, and I was happy to have a spot to work. There were days when I was alone, surrounded by such a threatening, looming plant. Once I took my hoe and whacked on a vine growing towards the garden, and I felt the entire kudzu forest shudder, and maybe it was a little bit of my imagination, but some of those vines seemed to grow closer to me every time I turned my back. Kudzu can grow up to one foot in a single day, and I was pretty sure I could see those tendrils inching my way. I think I went home early that day.
Kudzu was imported here in the early 1900’s as an animal feed crop first, and as a way of fighting the erosion caused by poor farming practices during the depression. The starchy vine took off, doing especially well in clear cut areas. When I searched on my computer for information I found two headlines, one right after the other. The first was, ““Kudzu the invasive vine that ate the south” followed by, “the true story of Kudzu, the vine that never truly ate the south.” According to the second article, Kudzu covers 227,000 acres of forest land, smaller than the size of the city of Atlanta. Chinese Privet covered more than 14 times the land than kudzu has swallowed. Still, no one has written horror stories about privet, not yet anyway.
I think invasives are here to stay, and we have to learn how to manage them. Joro spiders in Georgia, privet and kudzu all over the south, they seem to be here to stay. But things change. A Japanese stink bug, a kudzu stink bug has also slipped into the United States, and it is feeding on the vines. I doubt it will destroy the plant, but it might slow the growth down. People are making baskets out of kudzu, some are eating it, and in Knoxville TN a beer is brewed from it. The Joro spider is a colorful large orb weaver, and it isn’t dangerous, although its webs are strong and hard to break. The real dangers of invasive species are the ones that destroy native plants, or compete with them for food. Invasive plants don’t provide food for native pollinators or birds. The invasive spotted Lantern fly is destroying trees, and Bradford Pears sometimes pollinate with actual fruit bearing pears and stop them from producing fruit. Ash borers destroy Ash trees, and so on. With all this, the kudzu destruction looks worse than it is, and the sights of the vine growing along roadsides, up trees and power poles, and devouring barns and homes and people, that is just part of Southern life.
I thought about all these invasive plants when I visited friends in GA last weekend. We walked along a dirt road and passed a pretty farm home on one side and a huge mass of kudzu on the other side of the road. I saw all those tendrils reaching to the edge of the road, as if they were looking over at the house, making their vine crawling plans. Later that day we saw several Joro spiders, and even though I dislike spiders they have pretty colorful bodies.
With all my walking this month I have covered 30.5 miles, and have reached mile 724 on the AT. I would be staying at Lamberts Meadow Shelter, still in Virginia. It has been so very hot this summer, especially these last couple of weeks, and the heat seems appropriate for Virginia hiking. Oh well, cooler weather is coming.
