Kudzu (Pueraria thunbergiana)  is a thick green vine from the bean family (Fabaceae) that covers over 2 million acres of the Southland, crawling over anything in its path houses, forests, and as Southern folklore has it, human beings, if they keep still long enough.  No small wonder.  Only extremely cold weather can kill it.  The Southern frost tends to shrivel the leaves, but leaves the roots intact.  By spring, it simply picks up right where it left off, growing at least a foot a day during summer months, and up to 60 to 70 feet or more in a year.

     Imagine Jack's Beanstalk growing all over everything instead of simply straight up into the sky.

     My great-grandmother would always give me a real bad whipping for playing anywhere near kudzu.  She was sure that I would get bit by a water moccasin, or some other snake that was equally as poisonous, and she was probably right.   But I loved kudzu.  Everyone thought that it was nothing but a weed, but I knew that it was too powerful and relentless for that to be true.  I thought that it was beautiful in this frightfully unnerving way.  It went on for miles and miles into the horizon like a lush green ocean.  I can remember watching it from my bedroom window in my grandparents' house, its dark green tentacles waving back and forth gently against a starry blueblack sky, and I could feel it growing, extending itself to me, like a long lost love.  If it werenít for the dirt road between us, Iím sure it would have crawled right into my room and into me.

     Later, I would dare to wander across the way (in spite of the punishment that awaited me when I returned) to confirm my babygirl suspicions: the green pulpy residue of the kudzu vine smeared into the red of the sweet dirt road  by one slow-moving vehicle after another, caught beneath the brown of my tiny feet.

     My true love is Asian, it seems.  Kudzu is a native of China and Japan (they call it kuzu).  It was introduced to the United States by Japan at the Centennial Exposition of 1876 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (and later at the New Orleans Exposition of 1884-1886).  The beautiful green vine with its fragrant purple flowers became a popular household/backyard ornament with botanists and amateur horticulturists alike.  People actually sold this stuff through the mail in the early 1920's.

     Because  its in the bean family, it has a bacteria in its root that repairs atmospheric nitrogen, thus increasing soil fertility, so during the Great Depression, farmers were paid $8 an acre by the government to grow kudzu to prevent soil erosion, and thatís how it got all over the place.  They missed the boat, though.  In Asia, its used as a tea to prevent dysentery and fever.  They also make cloth and paper out of it, and yes,  even tofu.  Itís full of protein and great feed for livestock.  As far back as the 1700s in Japan it was used to make cakes and as a coating for fried foods.  Kudzu also contains a chemical called daidzin that has been used for thousands of years to supress the craving for alcohol.   Weíre catching up, though.  Researchers at Harvard Medical School are feeding kudzu to alkie rodents to prove to themselves what Asians have known for quite a spell.

      Someday soon, I will find my brown-skinned bare feet covered in sweet dust and standing on the mile-a-minute vine.  Until then, I remain in a Southerner in exile, in NYC.
 

--QE