https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-secret-life-of-kudzu/

Kudzu (scientific name: Pueraria lobata) is now often seen as a blight on the southern landscape of the United States, but like many invasive plants it was first introduced deliberately. Following its debut at the Japanese pavilion of the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial International Exhibition, the vine was quickly adopted to shade the gardens and porches of the American South and adorn them with its showy, fragrant flowers.

But kudzu did not escape from the garden into the wild all on its own; rather, it was extensively promoted by the Soil Conservation Service as a bulwark against erosion and a remedy for the environmental and economic troubles brought on by cotton and tobacco monoculture. These government efforts resulted in the planting of approximately three million acres of kudzu by 1946. Massive transplantation to a favorable soil and climate, combined with the lack of competitors, pests, diseases and land uses that kudzu had encountered in its native East Asian habitats, enabled the rapid-growing vine to carpet vast swaths of land.