The Invasive "Mile-a-Minute" Vine (Asiatic Tearthumb)

A northeastern U.S. headache.



On Patrol With the Weed Warriors.  (The New York Times, 9/24/2014)

What it is, what it does.

Mile-a-minute (Persicaria perfoliata), an invasive plant from Asia, is a sticky vine with tiny barbs and triangular leaves that grows six inches a day, climbing over shrubs and trees, until the landscape is cloaked in a dense, tangled mat of pale green. Called the kudzu of the north, it deprives plants of light and air, so they fail to flower and fruit. Seedlings of native trees and shrubs don’t stand a chance.

How it became a problem.

The seeds of mile-a-minute weed are thought to have come into the eastern United States on rhododendron plants imported from Asia in the 1930s. The plant was observed in a nursery in southern Pennsylvania in 1946, and by the mid-1990s was spreading through the Mid-Atlantic region, where it is now considered an invasive weed. By 2000, it was moving through Connecticut, New York, Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

University of Connecticut.  Mile-a-minute vine website.