How Kudzu Works

Kudzu is an amazing plant that, according to the video, now covers 7 million acres of the south and can grow up to a foot a day:

According to this article, it got its start in the US innocently enough:

Don’t demonize kudzu

From the article:

Kudzu was introduced into North America in the Japanese pavilion at the U.S. Centennial Exposition in 1876. People soon were using it to shade porches and courtyards in the Southern U.S., both because of its fast growth and because of its alluring grape-like smell.

At the same time, kudzu was being sold to farmers as an inexpensive forage crop for their animals. In the 1930s, it was pitched to farmers in the South as a cheap and easy way to reduce erosion, particularly in abandoned cotton fields.

But soon it got out of control. Today people are trying to find something useful to do with kudzu, and the answer may be biofuels. With its incredible growth rate, it may become a source of biomass.