Kudzu is known by many names in the South. Some of those names are “mile-a-minute vine”, “the vine that ate the South,” and “Cuss-you” plant. It grows at an amazing rate. At peak growing season, kudzu can grow more than a foot a day! Roots can weigh up to 500 lbs. and stems can grow as large as 4 inches in diameter.

Almost anywhere south of the Mason-Dixon Line, you can find the vine growing on utility poles, fences, trees and anything else that doesn’t move. Currently, it covers more than 2 million acres of forest land. Kudzu destroys valuable forests by preventing trees from getting sunlight. In essence, it starves them to death.

The Seattle Weekly Newspaper published an article several years ago stating that kudzu has been found in Oregon and Washington state. Santa Rosa, California, has passed an ordinance aimed at limiting the spread of kudzu by fining property owners if they let kudzu spread to a neighbor’s land. If the world continues to get warmer, scientists say that by 2030 the vine could spread as far north as the Great Lakes.

The vine is almost impossible to eliminate once it has taken root. Dr. James H. Miller of the U.S. Forest Service in Auburn, Alabama has researched methods for killing kudzu.

In eighteen years of research, he found that one herbicide actually makes kudzu grow better while many have little effect on the plant.

Miller recommends repeated herbicide treatments for at least four years, but some kudzu plants may take as long as ten years to kill, even with the most effective herbicides.

Yet, even with its destructive reputation, kudzu is something of a cultural icon for the South. There is a restaurant in Atlanta named after it, a comic strip written & illustrated by

Doug Marlette called “Kudzu,” and a southern rock band goes by the name Kudzu.

James Dickey, the renowned southern poet, wrote a dark poem about the vine, called appropriately enough, “Kudzu.”

Several books have been published about kudzu, including an interesting one compiled by Beryl Omega Lumpkin that is a collection of horror stories titled, “From the Kudzu Crypt.”

Probably the best way to deal with kudzu is through humor. There’s an old joke about a Yankee who asks a southern farmer how to grow kudzu. The farmer tells the Yankee to stomp on the ground a few times to get its attention, throw the kudzu seeds on the ground and then run like there’s no tomorrow