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. I had no reason to doubt declarations that kudzu covered millions of acres, or that its rampant growth could consume a large American city each year. Like most Southern children, I accepted, almost as a matter of faith, that kudzu grew a mile a minute and that its spread was unstoppable. In a few decades, a conspicuously Japanese name has come to sound like something straight from the mouth of the South, a natural complement to inscrutable words like Yazoo, gumbo and bayou. Introduced from Asia in the late 19th century as a garden novelty, but not widely planted until the 1930s, kudzu is now America’s most infamous weed. Though fascinated by the grape-scented flowers and the purple honey produced by visiting bees, I trembled at the monstrous green forms climbing telephone poles and trees on the edges of our roads and towns. I’d walk an extra mile to avoid patches of it and the writhing knots of snakes that everyone said were breeding within. As a young naturalist growing up in the Deep South, I feared kudzu.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
January 2023
Categories |