🇫🇷 Version française | 🇬🇧 English version
Kudzu (Pueraria montana) is a climbing vine native to Japan and China, now infamous worldwide for one spectacular talent: it never, ever stops growing.
Up to 30 centimetres per day. Entire forests swallowed in a single season. Telephone poles, abandoned houses, cars, bridges — all consumed beneath its relentless green blanket.
Introduced to North America in the 19th century as an ornamental plant and erosion remedy, kudzu quickly became one of the most feared invasive species on the continent. The American South still has not forgiven Japan. Probably.
In Japan, however, kudzu is revered. Its roots are used in traditional cuisine and medicine. Its fibres are woven into cloth. Poets have written about it since the Man'yoshu, the oldest anthology of Japanese poetry. It is, in a word, beloved.
This site is dedicated to the kudzu in all its contradictions:
monster and medicine, invader and icon, disaster and dinner.
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