Environment Minister Neletha Butterfield has declared war on an Asian weed that grows so quickly that it "threatens all plant life Island wide."

"It grows a foot a day and can cause significant damage to homes in its path," she said yesterday .

Ms Butterfield said the weed, called Kudzu, is one of the world's worst alien weeds: "This is the most dangerous plant we have had to deal with and we are trying to stop it spreading before it becomes established in other parts of the Island."

The sheer weight of its vine can uproot trees, telephone poles, even walls, said Ms Butterfield. Its vine bears three broad shaped dark green leaves and in certain seasons has small purple flowers.

"It is the worst invasive we have seen; worse than Mexican Pepper and Indian Laurel," she said.

And it is spreading over the Island. At first, Paget was the only parish where Kudzu was found, but recently, other patches have been discovered in Warwick.

"Invasive species are now recognised as the number one threat to Island biodiversity and Kudzu is globally recognised as the fastest growing invasive plants of all," she said.

Kudzu has been growing on the Island for 30 years and in this time they have grown stronger.

Joseph Furbert of Conservation Services said that every year Kudzu remains here, it grows more vigourously than the last.

Inside the primary site on the Railway Trail near Grape Bay Estate in Paget, Kudzu is in a large field and has begun to choke plants on the trail boundaries.

He said that within a year the area would be completely covered. Several homes adjacent to the site are threatened by Kudzu.

However, it would take ten years to completely remove Kudzu from the site he said.

He said that they lie dormant in winter, but grow in summer when the climate is hot and moist like in Asia.

Mr. Furbert and Drew Pettit from the Parks Department told The Royal Gazette that the only way to deal with Kudzu is to kill their extensive root system.

In large fields the surface vines will be scraped off using machines.

Once the whole area is cleared, it will be easy to see the new shoots that the roots send up through the soil.

Mr. Petit said they put Tordon, the herbicide proven to kill Kudzu in 75 percent of cases, directly on to the root through the new shoot holes. He said this is the most effective method of killing the parasite.

It was originally introduced to the US in 1876 as a garden plant but now covers seven million acres of the southeastern US alone.

The Departments of Conservation Services and Parks have developed the Kudzu Eradication Programme (KEP) to "eradicate Kudzu from the primary site and from all known sites in Bermuda," Ms Butterfield said.

Another goal if KEP is to raise public awareness about the Kudzu problem.

"Islands are particularly vulnerable to invasive (plants) and Bermuda's recent Biodiversity Project has highlighted the seriousness of the current situation," she said.