I was reading and interesting article about a book on invasive plants. “Invasive Plants: Guide to Identification and the Impacts and Control of Common North American Species” by Sylvan Ramsey Kaufman and Wallace Kaufman not only has a listing of invasive plants found in the US, but the history of why they came to the country.

Here in the mid-Atlantic there are several plants that are considered invasive that were mentioned in the article. One of my favorites is the mimosa tree. Although listed as an invasive plant I’ve never found more than a few of them dotting the landscape here and there. I think it’s beautiful and would actually like to have one in my yard, but since it is listed as an invasive, I’ll not do that.

How can anything so pretty and aromatic be invasive!?

One I’ve had and am still having personal experience with is kudzu. Many people in this region are familiar with what I call kudzu monsters. This is where the kudzu has taken over the landscape, crawled up the trees, entirely covering them and creating amazing “monster” shapes. Unfortunately this kills the trees. Kudzu can cover acres in very short order.

At our former residence we lived on a picturesque dirt road. Right at the entry to our little piece of heaven there was a small kudzu monster forest. Because the surroundings were so beautiful, I often took walks. One day, in mid-summer, I walked all the way down to the kudzu forest. As I was walking along I smelled this absolutely heavenly scent. I looked everywhere for the source and was startled and amazed when I found it was coming from the beautiful spiked flowers on the kudzu. Now I understand why it managed to mesmerize us into thinking it was a nice tame plant. Anything with flowers that pretty and aromatic has to be good, right? Well, unfortunately our climate was absolutely ideal for kudzu, so it grew at unprecedented rates. Combine that with a huge root system that can sprout runners and you’ve got the picture. I’m still dealing with one plant we found on our property. We’ll keep cutting it back until it dies from lack of energy. When we found it, it had already covered several trees and was branching out onto our neighbor’s property.

So, if you’re dealing with an invasive plant you might want to take a look at Kaufman’s book or at least do an internet search so you can understand the origin of the plant and why it arrived in the US in the first place. That might make you a little less angry with your ancestors. You can also read David Bare’s article. It has other interesting examples from the book.