“They come from foreign countries and they completely take over,” Lindsey Majer says with more than a hint of contempt. She’s not delivering another rant about closing our borders; she’s talking about exotic plants, an often overlooked threat to the Southern Appalachian environment. There are 15 different species of plants that the Forest Service has designated as major threats to the forests because they inhibit the growth of native plant species. The most obvious of these killer plants is kudzu, which spreads through the Southeast like a zombie virus in a‘70s horror flick.

The weed is so strong and pervasive that it’s reached near legendary status. James Dickey wrote poems about it. Rumors about its origin are told at campfires. Some say Auburn University imported it as a botanical experiment. Other’s say it was originally cultivated for its medicinal purposes, and still others say it was given to us by the Japanese, either as a gift or a very slow moving biological weapon. Any way you look at it, kudzu thrives in our climate, growing more than a foot a day.

Lindsey Majer is a member of Southern Appalachian Volunteer Environmental Monitoring (SAVEM), a group dedicated to keeping an eye on kudzu and other invasive plants. “These exotic species have no natural predators in our ecosystems,” Majer says. “So they out compete with the native plants for water, sunlight, and nutrients, destroying the native ecosystems.”

SAVEM monitors the growth of these exotic plants by hiking throughout the Southern Appalachians and tracking the invasive plants’ presence and growth. The organization then shares their data with landowners, developers, and government agencies that are in a position to control the spread of the killer plants.

Recently, SAVEM has influenced the Forest Service in the Nantahala National Forest to eliminate the invasive-though-pretty-sounding multiflora rose, which, if gone unchecked, would destroy native plant species. But kudzu is a more formidable foe. It consumes everything in its path–from trees to multi-story buildings. Members of the US Forest Service at Auburn have been trying to find a way to kill the weed for 18 years. Short of extensive herbicide treatments applied over the course of several years and excessive goat grazing, there is no known cure for kudzu. It’s just too strong.

Majer is realistic about her organization’s uphill battle. “Right now, we’re just in the monitoring stage,” she says. “Our goal is to inform the right people of the threat posed by invasive species and give them the data they need to take action.”

–Graham Averill