Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER 4
WELCOME TO AMERICA
As a Briton, someone from the “Old World,” I have often imagined that Americans are always good at
embracing the new and changing stride. But in investigating the American approach to alien species, I
have found great ambivalence. Heroes become villains with remarkable speed. Take the case of kudzu
( Pueraria lobata ), which Americans used to love. The public was exhorted in the early twentieth cen-
tury to plant the fast-growing “miracle vine” across the South. Blighted by the Dust Bowl, America
was buoyed by the hope that nature could be reborn, and the vine with bright green leaves and fragrant
flowers was seen as savior. Kudzu was a vegetable embodiment of the New Deal, healing the land and
reviving its battered people. Its Asian origins were irrelevant. America, after all, was a nation of foreign-
ers, founded on the belief that the world could be made afresh. Kudzu was the American way. Yet half
a century later, the miracle vine has been recast as “the vine that ate the South.” It is accused of killing
trees, invading croplands, wrecking buildings, and downing power lines. What happened? Did the vine
change, or did America?
Kudzu is a member of the pea family. It comes from China, where villagers still use its stems to make
rope, baskets, and paper. Its roots are a staple of traditional medicine, and its leaves feed livestock and
even humans during famines. But its name is Japanese, and kudzu reached America via Japan, thanks to
a diplomat named Thomas Hogg. He was Uncle Sam's consul in Tokyo in the 1870s and regularly sent
local plants home to his brother, who ran a nursery in New York and sold kudzu as an ornamental. Tho-
mas Hogg subsequently encouraged Japanese delegates to feature the pretty vine in garden exhibits at
international trade exhibitions in the United States, including the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia
in 1876, which was attended by ten million Americans. 1
Kudzu proved popular. Gardeners called it the “front porch vine.” Good Housekeeping magazine in
1909 lauded the “delicious fragrance” of its purple flowers and noted that it would “flourish where noth-
ing else will grow.” That might have been the first warning sign, but back then it sounded good. 2
Government agricultural scientists took an interest too. They recommended kudzu leaves as fodder
for livestock. Its ability to grow anywhere attracted the attention of government agents fighting drought.
From 1935, the head of the government's new Soil Conservation Service, Hugh Hammond Bennett, pro-
moted it as the lynchpin of Operation Dustbowl, his program to restore messed-up soils, particularly in
the cotton fields of the South. The vine could grow as much as a foot a day. Its spreading foliage covered
the ground and prevented erosion by wind and rain. Its deep roots sought moisture and contained bac-
teria that fixed nitrogen from the air, fertilizing soils.
There was a craze for kudzu. It had its own champion on the radio. Georgia farmer Channing Cope
broadcast his daily down-home radio show from his front porch, where he had planted kudzu. He formed
the Kudzu Club of America and wrote articles praising it in the Atlanta Constitution . “Kudzu is the
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