We brought in a 'pretty' shrub to decorate our gardens—now it’s choking millions of acres of American forest.

America introduced Chinese privet as an ornamental shrub in 1852. Gardeners liked its dense growth, but the plant soon escaped into the wild. By the 1990s, its thickets occupied 2.9 million acres of southeastern forest. It now chokes out native plants, as birds spread its seeds across the entire region.