In the dictionary next to the definition of "invasive species," they could show a photo of kudzu. Nothing seems to stop it. Since it was first introduced to the U.S. at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876,﻿﻿ it has been swallowing the country from an epicenter in the south at the rate of about 50,000 baseball fields per year, occupying an estimated 3,000,000 hectares today.﻿﻿ Kudzu can grow up to 60 feet per season, or about one foot per day.﻿﻿

Survival of the Fittest

Kudzu is extremely bad for the ecosystems that it invades because it smothers other plants and trees under a blanket of leaves, hogging all the sunlight and keeping other species in its shade.﻿﻿ It can also survive in low nitrogen areas and during droughts, allowing it to out-compete native species that don't have those superpowers.﻿﻿ The only other plants that can compete with kudzu are other invasive species, so that doesn't really help.

Strongbad1982 / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

The great kudzu invasion all started out with a mistake: The Soil Erosion Service and Civilian Conservation Corp intentionally planted it to control soil erosion in the state of Pennsylvania.﻿﻿ It was also used in the southeast to provide shade to homes, and as an ornamental species.

But as you can see in the map above, the result is more like a fast-growing cancer than anything else. How can you get rid of a plant that covers around a quarter of the country?

A Climate Change Culprit

As if that wasn't bad enough, kudzu also decreases the soil's ability to sequester carbon, thus contributes to climate change.

In a 2014 study, researchers studying kudzu in native pine forests found that kudzu invasion leads to increased amounts of carbon released from the soil organic matter into the atmosphere.﻿﻿ This is probably because kudzu's organic matter degrades a lot more easily than what it replaces (like organic matter from trees).

Goats to the Rescue

Giovanna Graf / EyeEm / Getty Images

The most Earth-friendly way to fight kudzu seems to be with goats,﻿﻿ but it would take quite a lot of them to get through all the kudzu in the U.S. However, if you need to deal with invasive species and don't have goats, you can conveniently rent a herd, as we've written about before with Rent-a-Goat.