1. Kudzu Vine & Palmer Amaranth:
Past, Present, and Future
Jessica Lenker
PA Department of Agriculture
2. Kudzu
• The vine that ate the South…..and the North!
• 1876 - Pennsylvania introduces kudzu at the Centennial
Exposition
• 1920s - Florida nursery promotes it as a forage plant and
sells it mail order
• 1930s - Soil Conservation Service offered incentives for
planting kudzu for erosion
• 1950s - government stopped
promotion
• 1970s - it was declared a weed
• 1989 - Pa Noxious Weed
• 1997 - Federally Noxious Weed
3. Kudzu Eradication Program
• Grant funded 2005-2008
• 89 spatially distinct
populations (137 individual
properties)
– 47 sites treated by PDA
– 11 sites treated by owner
under PDA advisement
– 31 sites untreated/not
monitored
• By the end of the program
about 50% were eradicated
or almost eradicated.
4. Current Status
Delaware – 12
Philadelphia – 10
Alleghany & Chester – 6 ea
York & Lancaster – 5 ea
Montgomery – 3
Franklin & Westmoreland – 2 ea
Berks, Cambria, Lebanon, & Northampton – 1 ea
9. Managing Kudzu
• Starts with correct identification!
– Grape Vine
– Bur Cucumber
• PDA monitoring
– Yearly site visits to assess progress
– Aid in management strategies
– Educate landowners
• Kudzu managers include homeowners, DCNR,
municipal workers, & universities
• Notify PDA if you think you have a new site
10. Managing Kudzu
• Eradication is possible, but
the work is tedious…
• Each site is different
– What’s under the kudzu?
– Terrain workable?
– How old is the population?
14. • What?
Palmer Amaranth
– Pigweed species like no other
– First PA discovery Sept 2013
• 5 Lancaster, 2 Franklin, 1 Berks & 1
Bedford
– Produces 500,000+ small seeds
from one plant
• Spread over an acre, 10 seeds per
square foot
– Resistant to some herbicides
including glyphosate
– Moved up from the southern
states initially
• Manure – hay, feed
• Equipment
15. Palmer Amaranth
• What?
– Thrives in hot, dry conditions
– Summer annual – germinates late spring/early summer
– Seeds need light to germinate
• Deep tillage for first year
– Diocious – separate male and female plants
– Genetically diverse plant - hybrids
– Pollen from male plant is what carries the glyphosate
resistant gene
• Pollen can travel ½-1 mile
16. Palmer Amaranth
• How to Identify?
– Unusually tall – 6-10 feet
– Long seed heads – 10-12
inches
– Prickly seed heads –
female
– Petiole is as long if not
longer than the leaf –
droopy appearance
– Stems/leaves hairless,
smooth
– Did it survive herbicide
applications?
17. Grew 4 inches in 52 hours
Images: University of Georgia
18. Managing Palmer Amaranth
• Each site will be managed differently
• BMPs – Containment!
– Pull out plants out destroy (burn/bury) on site
– Mow down the weed
– Thoroughly clean equipment and anyone in the
contaminated field
19. Palmer Amaranth
• Why do we care?
– Decreased crop yields – 30-50%
– Economics of eradicating
– Quarantine of ag products between states
– Decreased property values
• What to do?
– Education, education, education!
– Scout early and often
– Pay attention to field inputs and where they are coming
from
– If palmer is suspected anywhere in PA in any quantity
notify PSU (Curran or Lingenfelter) or PDA (Jessica Lenker).
