(ON) The Toronto Star – Growing by as much as a foot per day, it reaches up hydro poles and across transmission wires, eventually collapsing them under its weight. It overtakes and suffocates trees and crops, pollutes watersheds and costs the U.S. agriculture industry a reported $500-million per year. And now, the perennial and invasive kudzu vine has made it to Canada.

The kudzu was discovered two months ago in a small patch, 110 metres wide and 30 metres deep, on a south-facing slope on the shore of Lake Erie near Leamington, Ont., about 50 kilometres east of Windsor. More