If kudzu were a political candidate, it would win the White House. If it were a sports team, nothing could stop it. It is the perfect metaphor for life. James Dickey wrote about it. The Southeast is buried in it. It grows a foot a night.
I know all about Pearl Harbor in World War II, but the Japanese didn’t really need to attack us in the 1940’s, they had already started a takeover of the U.S. through kudzu, introduced at the 100th birthday of America in Philly in 1876. We did the rest to ourselves by transplanting the ornamental rambler to stop erosion. By the early 1970’s, the U.S. Government declared kudzu a weed. Farmers curse it as a menace. It grows faster here than in Japan.
Kudzu, like a veggie tumor, grows malignantly, will climb trees, utility poles and into your house overnight if you leave the windows open. This stuff is all over the Deep South and working its way out to the rest of the country. I can see New York City as a lumpy, green mass like tall boxes under a leafy blanket.
Some people think it is an alien species. Some call it a conspiracy. The rest of us just watch it move faster than the Auburn offense can get down the field (note this year’s Alabama / Auburn football game). I say that because I heard a disgruntled War Eagle fan complain, “Just throw the ball in some kudzu, it’ll get to the end zone faster.”
Experts have tried to kill it but kudzu likes many herbicides and grows even faster when sprayed by certain retardants. If you use napalm or agent orange, it may take ten years to control it.
Napalm? Agent Orange? I’m having a flashback, excuse me for a moment.
(Doors music playing in background)
Okay, sorry. I’m back.
Tuskegee University has found that grazing goats works best and also produce gallons of mike while chewing the stuff. Kudzu munching goats leading a green revolution may be a few years away, but why not get them started? Perhaps the goat cheese industry doesn’t want to see the market flooded.
If we can’t beat it, however, we may as well join it. People have begun using the vines for basket weaving and the flowers for jelly. Since it is packed with nutrients, cooks have begun trying to recipe kudzu out of existence. Harvard has found that an extract from Kudzu can help treat alcoholism, likely brought on across the South by the frustration of the weed’s uber success. Bourbon with a kudzu chaser?
There are books and festivals and websites and blogs about kudzu. Universities have classes on it. Kudzu is being considered as a good source for biofuels because of the carbohydrate content in the part of the plant in the ground (it takes carbs to get ethanol). In fact, kudzu has the same, if not more carbs than corn, which would eliminate the controversy of using food for fuel. Kudzu is like solar and wind. It’s there. It’s not doing anything but growing. It can churn out 270 gallons per acre of ethanol. So what are we waiting for? Instead of “drill, baby, drill” perhaps we should be yelling “vine, baby, vine!”
Kudzu could make up about 10% of our nation’s biofuel supply. Or it can be used as a cheap food source. Or we can turn the fibrous plant into textiles. Sounds like the pesky wee just may lead the way to the future of alternative low-impact energy, low-impact fabrics and low impact food.
At a time when the green movement needs a push, maybe kudzu is just the vine to do the job. Wait a week and it will have solved seven more feet of problems.
