Kudzu
Pueraria montana
Imported in 1876 as an ornamental. The South has been reconsidering this decision for 150 years.
Kudzu came to the United States as an ornamental, shown at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition and admired as a polite garden vine. It stayed a decoration until the 1930s, when the government paid Southern farmers to plant it by the million against soil erosion. It held down rather more than the soil. The vine now swallows fields, fences, and the occasional utility pole, and the people who planted it have had the better part of a century to think it over.
