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Kudzu by Brett Gover |
Prior to this road trip, I hadn’t traveled in Mississippi in years, and I had almost forgotten about kudzu.
In case you haven’t heard of kudzu, it’s an invasive plant that’s often referred to as “the vine that ate the South.” It’s native to China and Japan but was widely planted in the southeastern United States in the mid-20th century because it works well as an erosion-control agent.
However, it soon became clear that kudzu was out control. It thrives here in the South, growing as much as 12 inches a day. As it grows and spreads, it blankets everything in its path, including bushes, trees, fences, and telephone poles.
Oh yes, and buildings – even big ones. When I visited Historic Jefferson College in Natchez, a member of the staff explained to me that the institution had closed down in 1964 and the buildings had been abandoned; when a renovation project got underway in the 1970s, the buildings had to be uncovered from a thick blanket of kudzu.
The vine still reigns behind the buildings, where it has transformed part of the campus into a giant topiary garden. If you let your imagination run free, you can see all sorts of creatures and shapes in the kudzu-covered landscape.— Brett Gover
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Historic Jefferson College in Natchez by Brett Gover |
