N.C. Cooperative Extension, Union County Center wants you to be on the lookout for another aggressive invasive vine. In early spring, driving around Union County, you can see loads of purple flowers hanging in the trees like bunches of purple grapes. But this isn’t a grape vine. No, this is Chinese Wisteria, an aggressive invasive plant that spreads from your garden into the wild. It climbs up trees and shades out the tree’s own foliage. It adds extra weight to tree limbs and snaps them off. And on the forest floor, it outcompetes tree roots and other plants for soil moisture and nutrients. Basically, it acts like kudzu or english ivy, which are also both aggressive invasive vines that kill trees. 

Early spring is a great time to identify Chinese Wisteria because the purple flowers stick out like a sore thumb. If you see it climbing up trees, cut it at the base. Everything above the cut will dry up and quickly die. It will sucker back from the ground, so you have come back and cut it off at ground level a few times per year. And where it grows across the ground, you can rip it up or poison it. If you keep at it, eventually you will force it to deplete its resources. Then it becomes just a small task once a year to check for any resprouts.