Free Wicked Plants by Amy Stewart

junipers have both male and female organs on one plant (monoecious), which means that they might produce some berries but will also shed pollen.

BERMUDA GRASS
Cynodon dactylon
    One of the most popular grasses for lawns in the South and warm-weather climates throughout the world, it is also the most allergenic. It blooms steadily, and the flowers often grow so low that lawn mowers miss them. New varieties don’t produce any pollen at all, but older varieties are so problematic that some cities in the Southwest have banned them.

DESTRUCTIVE

Kudzu
    PUERARIA LOBATA
    Kudzu to the rescue!” So proclaimed a 1937
Washington Post
article about the powers of this exotic vine to control erosion. And indeed, for almost a hundred years the vine enjoyed the enthusiastic support of American gardeners and farmers.
    FAMILY :
Fabaceae
    HABITAT:
Warm, humid climates
    NATIVE TO:
China; introduced to Japan in the 1700s
    COMMON NAMES:
Mile-a-minute vine, the vine that ate the South. To the Japanese, the word
kudzu
means “rubbish,” “waste,” or “useless scraps.”
    The Centennial Exposition, held in 1876 in Philadelphia, was a carnival of wonders. Roughly ten million Americans were introduced to the telephone, the typewriter, and a miraculous new plant from Japan: kudzu. Plant enthusiasts loved the flowers’ fruity, grapelike fragrance and the fact that the vine could scramble over a trellis so quickly
    Soon farmers realized that livestock would eat the vine, making it a useful forage crop. Kudzu gripped the soil and stopped erosion. A government program encouraging the use of the vine gave kudzu all the encouragement it needed.
    Kudzu had other plans for the South. The vine made itself at home, growing up to a foot per day during the warm, humid summers. This plant is born to run: Over two dozen stems emerge from a single crown, and eachof those vines can stretch to one hundred feet. A single massive tap root can weigh up to four hundred pounds. Each individual leaf can twist and turn so that it receives the maximum amount of sunlight, making the vine particularly efficient at harnessing the sun’s energy and keeping rays from reaching the plants below it.
    Kudzu shrugs off cold weather and spreads by underground rhizomes and seeds, which can survive for several years before sprouting. It strangles trees, smothers meadows, undermines buildings, and pulls down power lines. Southerners say they sleep with the windows closed to keep it from sneaking into the bedroom at night.
    The vine covers seven million acres in the United States. The damage it has caused is estimated in the hundreds of millions. At the Fort Pickett military base in Virginia, kudzu overwhelmed two hundred acres of training land. Even M1 Abrams battle tanks couldn’t penetrate the rampant growth.
    But the South has not surrendered. Aggressive herbicide campaigns, controlled burns, and repeated slashing of new growth can keep kudzu in check. Southerners also fight back by eating the vine that is eating them: fried kudzu leaves, kudzu blossom jelly, and kudzu stem salsa all put a bad plant to good use.
    Meet the Relatives Kudzu is a legume; it is related to such useful plants as soybeans, alfalfa, and clover.

DESTRUCTIVE

LAWN OF DEATH
    Who knew grass could be so dangerous? A lawn of wicked grasses could slice your skin with razorlike blades, close your throat with maddening pollen, get you drunk, and poison you with cyanide. One grass even acts as cremator, bursting into flames and sending its seeds and runners over the ashes.

COGON GRASS
Imperata cylindrical
    The bright chartreuse blades grow to four feet tall, crowding out everything in their path. The edge of each blade is embedded with tiny silica crystals as sharp and serrated as the teeth of a saw. Roots can travel more than three feet deep, producing barbed rhizomes that pierce the roots of other plants and shove them out of the way in a sinister quest for world dominance.
    Some botanists suspect that