the abbreviated reign of “neon” leon spinks

Lesson #4
BAD RESULTS TRUMP
GOOD INTENTIONS
kudzu: a most tangled tale
What began as a well- intentioned effort to stop soil erosion
in the American South became a dramatic example of
what can happen when you mess with Mother Nature.
A BRONZE HISTORICAL marker along Highway 90 on the outskirts
of Chipley, Florida, commemorates a commercial nursery that once operated
in that small town. The nursery was established in the early 1900s by
Quaker conservationists Charles and Lillie Pleas, a couple who, were they
alive today, might not recognize the transformed landscape of the American
South for which they were partly, and inadvertently, responsible. In
just a few short words, the marker tells a tale of good intentions gone horribly
wrong; of inflamed passions and misguided love; of unstoppable ecological
menace and strange, gothic beauty. It reads in part: “Kudzu
developed here.”
But to credit, or blame, the couple with developing what’s now
known as “the vine that ate the South” is a vast oversimplifi cation. The
Pleases were early boosters of kudzu (pronounced kud-zoo), a Japanese
import that grows with the approximate speed and intensity of a tsunami,
but they eventually were joined in their crusade to promote the vine by,
among others, an outspoken Atlanta newspaper columnist and, eventually,
the New Deal Democratic government of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Each saw in kudzu a logical solution to critical erosion and agricultural