In parts of New York north of New York City, Kudzu has made green skeleton forests of the trees. It starts climbing up the tree and if not stopped it’s foilage eventually crowds out the foilage of the tree. Most of the tree dies leaving its skeleton covered in the Kudzu.
A relative has a house in Westchester county. Every year he and I keep checking for new Kudzu starting to make a climb onto the hundreds of trees on his lot. We pull them out by the roots and for as far along the root as we can. But they are so prolific in the area it is a constant battle.
About two years ago I was determined to get rid of a section of kudzu along a fence row, about a hundred feet by ten feet. I dug it all up, kinda looked like sweet potatoes, three truck loads, but I got it all entirely.
There are areas in Portland where ivy has completely taken over, covering the ground and entire trees. Himalaya blackberry thickets get really big in the Northwest too, but at least they produce tasty fruit. When I was a kid, I used to take two long boards and a five-gallon bucket and work my way across the tops of the thickets where nobody else could reach the berries, sometimes 8 or 10 feet above the ground and 100 feet or more in from the edge. Falling off the boards was not a good thing.