Now, kudzu is most commonly found in the U. Why are they harmful? Known to grow a foot a day in the summer season, kudzu vines grow up to ft long and can quickly smother trees, houses, power lines, and anything else that stands in its way. Tolerant to both drought and frost, its hardiness allows it to remain dominant and outcompete other plants. The first recorded use of kudzu in North America was as a shade plant on porches in the American South the plant produces attractive, fragrant purplish flowers in mid-summer.
Kudzu was heavily promoted in the earlys when the government paid farmers to use the vine for erosion control more than a million acres are estimated to have been planted as a result and as a drought-tolerant, nitrogen-fixing legume capable of bacterial growth with stem and root nodules converting free nitrogen to nitrates, which the host plant utilizes for its growth in low nitrogen soils for livestock feed.
During the Great Depression, thousands of acres of kudzu were planted by the Civilian Conservation Corps for hillside stabilization projects. In some areas, kudzu blossoms have been prized for their use in making kudzu blossom jelly and jam. The long kudzu fibers are also used in basket making.
Ko-hemp, a more refined version of kudzu fiber has long been used for cloth weaving in China. These government-sanctioned uses of the vine, combined with its innate, aggressive, range-expansion capabilities resulted in a rapid spread of kudzu throughout North America. Kudzu can now be found in 30 states from Oregon and Washington State to Massachusetts, particularly infesting states from Nebraska and Texas eastward most heavily; the vine is most common in the South. It has also been discovered in Hawaii and the warm, south-facing growing region on the north shore of Lake Erie in the Canadian Province of Ontario.
Kudzu is an herbaceous to semi-woody, climbing or trailing, nonnative, deciduous, perennial vine or liana a vine that is rooted in ground-level soil and uses trees and other vertical supports telephone polls, buildings, etc. A well-known example would be common wild grape. Kudzu produces long, hairy vines from a central root crown. Kudzu has dark-green, hairy, alternate, compound leaves, 2 — 8 inches 5 — 20 cm in length with three oval- to heart-shaped leaflets 3 — 4 inches 8 — 10 cm long at the end; these leaves may be slightly or entirely lobed.
Stems are also hairy. Vines can grow up to 30 to feet 9 — The vines have 0. Vertical kudzu vines in full sunlight produce flowers in late-summer; horizontal vines seldom produce flowers. The flowers are typically red, purple, or magenta with a strong, grape-like aroma; pink or white flowers occur occasionally. The most common method of spread is by setting new root crowns at almost every node where horizontal trailing stems come in contact with bare soil this can be every few feet ; new vines will form at these nodes the following spring and will spread out in all available directions.
Kudzu tap roots can grow up to 12 feet 3. This may help kudzu to withstand long periods of drought. Kudzu usually does not flower until its third year, with flowers and seeds forming only on vertical climbing vines. I believed, as many still do, that kudzu had eaten much of the South and would soon sink its teeth into the rest of the nation.
Perhaps it was while I watched horses and cows mowing fields of kudzu down to brown stubs. I found it odd that kudzu had become a global symbol for the dangers of invasive species, yet somehow rarely posed a serious threat to the rich Southern landscapes I was trying to protect as a conservationist.
Kudzu might have forever remained an obscure front porch ornament had it not been given a boost by one of the most aggressive marketing campaigns in U. But in , as dust storms damaged the prairies, Congress declared war on soil erosion and enlisted kudzu as a primary weapon. More than 70 million kudzu seedlings were grown in nurseries by the newly created Soil Conservation Service. Many historians believe it was the persuasive power of a popular radio host and Atlanta Constitution columnist named Channing Cope that finally got those seedlings in the ground.
He was, as cultural geographer Derek Alderman suggests, an evangelist. Railroad and highway developers, desperate for something to cover the steep and unstable gashes they were carving into the land, planted the seedlings far and wide. There were kudzu queens and regionwide kudzu planting contests. By the early s, Cope had started the Kudzu Club of America, with a membership of 20, and a goal of planting eight million acres across the South.
By , 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 the early s, the Soil Conservation Service was quietly back-pedaling on its big kudzu push. But the myth of kudzu had been firmly rooted. All total, kudzu has the ability to spread up to 60 feet per growing season.
One root can produce many vines, all of which creep outward—horizontally and vertically—clinging and climbing and creating curtains of kudzu. Because of this, kudzu growth can be problematic for other plants too. Kudzu spreads over the landscape and creates a thick carpet that smothers neighboring plants and trees, shielding them from the sunlight they need to thrive. Kudzu has the ability to cycle nitrogen through the soil and the air at a rate higher than many other plants, and research has found that nitrogen rates are higher in areas where kudzu is plentiful.
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