Posted on 12/03/2002 7:54:55 AM PST by stainlessbanner
DAHLONEGA, Ga.
(KRT) - This quaint little town on the edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains is known for its sparkling waterfalls, its showcase of colorful fall leaves and its sweeping display of weeds, or kudzu, that drape over trees to form a landscape of towering green statues.
In much of the South, kudzu - a stubborn and fast growing vine from Asia that covers up to 7 million acres from Florida to Texas - is known as "the green menace."
But people who live in the mountains have embraced it as part of the Appalachian culture, holding yearly festivals, using its vines to weave baskets and crafts and turning its sweet purple blossoms that taste like grapes into jelly and syrup.
That, however, is an exception. For nearly a century, Southerners have struggled to free their land from the clutches of the defiant exotic that has become as much a part of the landscape as peach groves and red dirt. They've chopped it, burned it and doused it with almost every toxic chemical known to man. Still, the lush green vine, which turns brown and dormant after the first frost, always comes back in the spring.
In recent years, it has marched as far north as New York, Pennsylvania and the Midwest, where a trend to warmer winters has allowed the plant to survive in places such as Illinois and Missouri.
Horticulturists in Illinois recently were horrified to find the vine growing in a Chicago Transit Authority lot near Evanston, the farthest north it has been spotted in the state. Chicago area temperatures had been considered too cold for the seeds to develop, but kudzu had been found previously in Peoria and Rock Island.
Illinois began assessing kudzu in 1997, and two years ago, the state began aggressively working to eradicate it by cutting it and spraying it with herbicides before it spread, said Jody Shimp, regional biologist for the Department of Natural Resources in Benton, Ill. Thus, the weed covers only 417 acres in Illinois--90 percent of it Downstate.
"We know that kudzu can be a real headache for landowners," said Shimp, adding that the kudzu found in Evanston was immediately attacked. "We see what has happened in the South, and there is no way we are going to let it happen here. All landowners have to do is call us, and we will come and get rid of it."
It is easy to do that in Illinois because there isn't much of it. Down South, it is almost impossible.
"Every town in the South has kudzu, and every one of them would like to know how to get rid of it," said Jack Anthony, a Dahlonega author and photographer who has traveled the region taking pictures of kudzu. "But it really adds to the character of a place.
"Northerners don't understand why we let it take over and kill all our plants. But down here, it's just something we have to live with."
Kudzu was introduced to the United States at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. In the 1930s, the federal government promoted kudzu in the South as a means of controlling soil erosion. It took so well to the warm climate that it now consumes about 120,000 acres a year, killing native plants and disrupting ecosystems with its smothering blanket of leaves and rendering the land unproductive.
Its terror does not end there.
Kudzu clings to the sides of buildings like a giant beanstalk, covers utility poles and fences and cloaks national forests, suburban back yards and open fields in a rich green. The vine quickly overcomes anything in its path, including cars, tractors, houses and other vegetation left idle too long. And once it takes grip, it can up to a decade of constant work to break its hold.
Pentagon officials said kudzu has overrun training areas in Ft. Pickett, Va., Ft. Bragg, N.C., Ft. Jackson, S.C., and the Anniston Army Depot in Alabama. One problem, they said, is that the thick cover provides a cool shelter for poisonous copperhead snakes.
"It's like a pesky neighbor that won't go away," said James Miller, a research ecologist with the U.S. Forest Service in Auburn, Ala. "This is the legacy we are leaving for future generations. And it is a sorry signal of our inability to rid our landscape of noxious pests and pass more productive land on to our children."
For years, no one paid much attention to kudzu. In fact, the Soil Conservation Service, fearing another Dust Bowl, paid Southern farmers as much as $8 an acre to plant fields of the vines during the Great Depression. More than 73 million kudzu seeds were planted along highways and ditches, some of it making its way North.
Today, some people continue to promote its value. It is used for medicinal purposes in Japan, and it has been touted as a cure for alcoholism.
"We use the root starch in many ways," said Diane Hoots, who operated her business, Krazy Kudzu, in Dahlonega before recently moving it to south Georgia.
She sells a variety of products using the weed.
"I grind it into powder and flour chicken with it, and I use it as a thickener in gravy. It's also good for digestive problems. Just make a concoction when you have the stomach flu."
One of kudzu's biggest advocates in the 1940s was a Covington, Ga., man named Channing Cope, who wrote newspaper articles about its wonders and used his daily radio program, broadcast from his front porch, to encourage people to grow it. He traveled across the southeast organizing kudzu clubs to honor what he called "the miracle vine."
He later became a laughing stock, and when he died in the 1960s, he was buried in an unmarked grave.
It took two decades for the federal government to admit it had made a huge mistake. In 1953, the Agriculture Department removed kudzu from its list of recommended cover crops. In 1970, the USDA declared it an invasive weed. Now the government is trying to eradicate it.
The vine can grow up to a foot a day to 60 feet a year. Its roots can sink to 10 feet deep and grow to 7 inches in diameter. A single plant can weigh up to 400 pounds.
Most cutting does not get deep enough to the roots. Burning only wilts the leaves. In some areas, goats and cows have been brought in to graze on the plant, but that is not always practical. Herbicides can work, but they must be applied for up to 10 years - a task that is too expensive and too cumbersome for most people.
USDA scientists have been working on a fungus that would destroy kudzu. For a while, the research proved hopeful, but recently they said the fungus had a serious side effect. While it would destroy kudzu, it releases undesirable metabolites into the atmosphere, threatening everything it comes in contact with, including people, animals and other plants.
The federal government only began monitoring kudzu on federal property two years ago. It still goes unchecked on private property. The weed is most prevalent in Georgia, Mississippi and Alabama, yet those states spend little money on research and cleanup.
"Often kudzu becomes established in non-productive, non-agricultural land. In the South, there are large stretches of land in between cities where cotton was once produced. Now much of it is covered with kudzu," said Douglas Boyette, a plant pathologist with the Agricultural Research Service's Southern Weed Science Research Unit in Stoneville, Miss. "It is one of those things where the land is worth less than it would cost to eradicate the weed."
As the population booms in the South, cities are spreading out into this once barren landscape and houses are going up in the midst of kudzu patches. In addition, there has been a movement by environmentalists to bring attention to the dangers of invasive species and their effect on the ecosystem.
"We are seeing rapid spread of a lot of invasive plants, such as kudzu," said Kay Havens, director of conservation science at the Chicago Botanic Gardens. "It has been recognized by most conservation biologists as the second greatest threat to biodiversity, behind habitat loss due to parking lots and housing developments."
Robert Burks, 85, and his wife, Mary, 82, have been fighting kudzu for more than a decade from their home in Mountain Brook, Ala. As environmentalists, they are concerned about using herbicides, so Robert Burks has tried to eliminate small patches of it near their home with an ax.
A few years ago, he began hacking the kudzu in a nearby city park every week for three summers. He has monitored it for the last eight years, he said, and it has not grown back.
"I happened to live close by, so I was able to go over all the time. Most people can't do that," said Burks, a retired chemist. "But all you have to do is cut it down to the ground, and keep it away from sunshine and food. If you have kudzu in a tree, and you use herbicide on it, you are going to get rid of a lot, including the tree. Nobody wants that to happen."
I have personally battled the stuff for years. The City of Atlanta had an old right of way behind our former house that was loaded with kudzu. It kept creeping across onto my land, and the City couldn't be bothered to clean up their mess. So I borrowed my neighbor's goat "Leona" and set up a dog line along the right of way. Leona happily chomped the kudzu and KEPT it chomped, we cleared 20 feet of the City's ROW and that was good enough for me. As long as you keep the leaves off it the roots will die.
None near our new house, thank goodness. Our neighbors have a Japanese wisteria that has escaped into the trees, but it's relatively harmless.
Another great Federal program!
Not only is heavy grazing a good deal for the landowner, it's a good deal for the goat (or whatever ruminant you assign the task). Kudzu is a legume, like alfalfa, and is consequently high in protein. It makes very good fodder. By the time the kudzu's gone, you'll have a fat happy critter.
Naw, 'twern't *Divine* retribution, but cuttings of kudzu vines picked up on axles and railcar fittings on overgrown railroad trackage in the South, then transported on northbound trains to Chicago's railyards. They had Sherman's March to the Sea, we had the Illinois Central and CSX freight drags taking our little *goodwill offering* presents to them....
And once kudzu gets a good start in the well-fertilized and cultivated downstate Illinois prarie cornfields and beanfields....
It's the *gift that keeps on giving....*
-archy-/-
The good news is that goats and llamas just love that stuff.
And if it rains during the operation, the cuttings will begin to put down roots. I've seen it happen overnight.
Bulldoze it into piles,
Leaving the roots in the ground, or attatched parasitically to other host plants, from which it will sprout anew, and the piles of cuttings will also root out, per comment above.
let the piles dry,
Whereupon leafs and flowers will blow on the wind, ready to propagate further if the sun is up and/or it's damp where any cuttings land.
Load it into trucks,
Which will scatter new starts of kudzu all along the paths those trucks travel, particularly in roadside drainage ditches and on guywires for utility poles.
burn it at a power station
I don't think the smoke from kudzu would sprout where it falls to earth, but I wouldn't bet on it. I do know that when burned outdoors, bits carried on the heated wind often take root around the scorched spots where it's been burned, leaving a green kudzu *doughnut* around the burn site.
make money.
Less, of course considerable labour, heavy equipment charges, fuel for the big trucks and 'dozer, and other incidental expenses.
But if you want to give it a go, I'd be glad to send you a quantity for testing. BTW, grown indoors where light and water sources can be controlled, it does make a pretty hanging plant. Very suitable as a present for an ex-wife or girlfriend, expecially one with cats....
Likewise pigs and cattle. Only problem is, the kudzu will spread beyond their pens or pastures. Pigs keep it pretty well-cropped [to bare ground!] but pretty well spoil the ground for any other use.
BTW, that second pic would be funny if it weren't tragic.
Until it rained.
For a while, folks were using the vines for weaving, much like cane or wicker is sometimes used. Only problem is that you need to keep it away from the kitchen or bathroom. Yep.
The woven baskets would start sprouting, then growing as much as a foot of offshoots a day, worse if there was sunlight around. Hardy stuff.
-archy-/-
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