Category Archives: The South

Finally, the experts were listening. By 1934, the U.S. Soil Conservation Service began encouraging southern farmers to plant kudzu as a soil preserving, nitrogen building ground cover. They placed a large order with Uncle Earl and Aunt Lillie who felt they would finally profit from their labors. However, their enterprise and hopes were dashed when they were required to put up a performance bond. They simply didn’t have the money to do so. They watched while others benefited from their thirty years of experimenting, cultivating, and promoting kudzu.

CE Pleas

In 1948, Aunt Lillie died at the age of 87 and was buried next to her father in the Glenwood Cemetery in Chipley. Soon after, Uncle Earl age 81, took off for the Pacific Coast one last time to do what he loved most…collect specimens and commune with nature. He and Lillie were married 57 years. She had been his constant companion and supporter in all their endeavors.  Before he left, he sold Glen Arden to my grandparents, Blanche (Aunt Lillie’s niece) and Herbert Dickinson of Indianapolis, whose love of nature and horticulture helped them maintain Glen Arden as a plant nursery cultivating Uncle Earl’s lovely azaleas and camellias. When Uncle Earl could no longer travel because of health, he lived his final years at Glen Arden, cared for by the Dickinson’s.

As for kudzu, the government stopped advocating it in 1953. In that same year, Uncle Earl was recognized with a testimonial dinner and an engraved trophy for his conservation efforts in Barnesville, Ga. He was proud of his accomplishments with conservation and his only request was that his efforts be mentioned on his tombstone.  He died in 1955 and was laid to rest next to his beloved Lillie, the flower of his life, in Glenwood Cemetery.

It wasn’t until 1967 that his own community recognized him posthumously by erecting a historical marker in Chipley. The Washington County Historical Commission and the Florida Board of Parks & Historical Memorials joined in the placement of the marker on the grounds of the Agriculture Center.  Ironically three years later, in 1970, the Dept. of Agriculture classified kudzu as a weed.

Kudzu Developed Here

This loving couple not only made horticultural contributions to Washington County but are remembered for their artistic talents of art and photography and bringing about a quality of life that ultimately enriched their neighbors’ lives. Any amount of time spent at Glen Arden leaves one with peace, serenity and an appreciation of the natural world.

Uncle Earl and the Kudzu Vine (part 1) ********** Uncle Earl and the Kudzu Vine (part 2)

More of Lynne’s Musings

Glen Arden

Needing more land, Uncle Earl and Aunt Lillie purchased 35 acres just south of Chipley on SR277, the Vernon Highway.  Glen Arden was the name Aunt Lillie gave to their new homestead and nursery. It was a name taken from a book she read that suggests a peaceful garden or sanctuary. It was here where Lillie’s father found so much serenity. It was here where Uncle Earl would plant specimen’s collected from all over the country. It was here where they would end up cultivating kudzu.

They had a love affair with life and were great fair goers.  In 1893 they attended the Chicago World’s Fair known as the Columbian Expo, commemorating the 400^th anniversary of Columbus. In 1904 they attended the St. Louis World’s Fair which celebrated the centennial of the Louisiana Purchase. Next was the Jamestown Expo in Norfolk, Va., 1907, commemorating the founding of the colony. In 1909, while Aunt Lillie stayed home, Uncle Earl attended the World Expo in San Francisco and visited relatives. Taking a month to get back home, he went on “field expeditions”, camping along the way, collecting plants, sketching them and bird watching. He and Aunt Lillie had a lifetime membership in the Audubon Society.

Chicago 1893 World's Fair

Their lifestyle often times was criticized by their contemporaries. Not having any children, they were free to travel and explore the world around them. Often times they marched to a different drum beat which was particularly true for their interest in kudzu. Kudzu was first introduced by the Japanese in 1876 at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition as an ornamental. However, it was at the Chicago World’s Fair (1893) that Uncle Earl and Aunt Lillie first saw the plant. She thought its purple bloom and vine-like qualities would add beauty to her arbor at Glen Arden. It would be several years later before they acquired the plant.

The story is told that the plant not only took over the arbor but threatened to take over the house. Disgusted, Uncle Earl uprooted and threw it out by a fence line. It survived and the neighbor’s cows and goats reached through the fence and couldn’t get enough of it. Not wanting to cause any harm to the animals, Uncle Earl sent a sample to the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture for analysis. The results proved it high in protein, 18% compared to alfalfa at 14%. A botanist’s report said, “You might have trouble making livestock eat it.” Learning that kudzu was a legume, a member of the bean family, they discovered its nitrogen, soil building qualities. Their neighbors’ fields of cotton had robbed the soil of nitrogen and yearly droughts had turned acreage into eroded, barren land. Corn withered in the fields and produced little fodder for animals. Watching this happen, Uncle Earl and Aunt Lillie turned their efforts toward conservation and erosion control, a concept that was new and not well accepted by their fellow neighbors. It wasn’t practical and was a waste of time, they declared. Uncle Earl and Aunt Lillie were concerned about conserving ground water, top-soil and keeping a balance in the eco-system. Preserving forests and not overcutting in order to protect habitat for wildlife was also of importance. Protect it now for the future was not a concept widely accepted.

CE Pleas inquiry

All of their energy and money went into the development of kudzu, a twenty year crusade. Advertising its virtues, Uncle Earl started a mail order business and inquiries about the plant came in from all over the country. The Post Office Department stopped them from shipping plants by mail in order to investigate the legitimacy of their literature. They claimed they were using the mails to defraud. No plant can grow this abundantly, they thought.  Charges were promptly dropped and apologies offered after they witnessed themselves kudzu’s growing capabilities. Uncle Earl could get eleven tons of hay from four cuttings in a summer. “You control it by cutting low or putting animals in the field” he said.

Uncle Earl and the Kudzu Vine (part 1) **********  Uncle Earl and the Kudzu Vine (part 3)

More of Lynne’s Musings

One doesn’t have to drive far along the interstates and back roads of the south to witness mounds of kudzu taking over banks, running up telephone poles and blanketing trees. While in Mississippi, recently, I noticed perfectly manicured yards bordered by kudzu. Down the road was a large sign stating, Kudzu Destruction Demonstration. I chuckled, thinking about the person who is responsible for the “vine that ate the south.”  He is my great-great uncle, Charles Earl (C.E.) Pleas, known to me as Uncle Earl. There is a Highway Marker outside the Agriculture extension office in Chipley, FL that pays tribute to the Pleases development of kudzu. Other than a few family stories I had heard as a child and only meeting him once at the age of eight, I wanted to uncover who my great-great Uncle Earl was. I wanted to know his story and especially his connection to kudzu.

CE & Lillie Pleas

At the turn of the Twentieth Century, Uncle Earl and his new wife, Lillie Conley Pleas, moved from Indiana to Chipley, a small frontier town founded in 1882 located in Florida’s Panhandle. This Quaker, educated couple brought with them talents little known and understood. Both were naturalists and collectors of specimens from their many trips, be it a rock from Colorado or a pine cone from the California Sequoias. Aunt Lillie was a taxidermist and had an extensive insect collection. It was their joint interest in “bugs” that began their romantic courtship. She was a talented artist, using oils to depict scenes from nature. Some of her artwork today is still displayed in the Washington County Hospital and owned by private collectors. Uncle Earl was a horticulturist and took up photography, setting up a small studio in town. When not at the studio, he was in the woods photographing plants, flowers and mushrooms.

But one can’t live off of art, photography and taxidermy alone, thus they raised and grew their own fruit, grains and vegetables on a four-acre garden patch on the edge of town. What they didn’t need themselves, they sold to others. Putting up over 1800 items yearly, they canned, dried, pickled and preserved, exhibiting their efforts at the Fair at DeFuniak Springs and the Florida State Fair at Tampa. Care and pride in their work earned them hundreds of blue ribbons and recognition. Aunt Lillie was also known for her flowers. She grew them, sold them and dried them. She became recognized for her artistic flower arrangements and shared her talent with others. Uncle Earl photographed her unique floral designs and made post cards. Often times she would preserve the flowers themselves and would use them for still life art subjects.

No wonder they loved nature. Uncle Earl was raised on a farm and plant nursery. He accompanied his father on his daily walks, collecting this and collecting that, learning their botanical names and classification system. Another influence was Aunt Lillie’s father, John J. Conley who was a charter member of the Wayne County (Ind.) Horticultural Society and erected the first greenhouse. He moved to Chipley in 1904 to live with Lillie and Earl until his death in 1907 at the age of 95. From his diary, I read his thoughts on living in Chipley: “A change of seven hundred miles toward the tropics is a great one for a man who has spent all his years where the summers are short and the winters long and barren. But to be able to spend my declining years in the  “land of  flowers” in the loving care of my daughter, Lillie, and her husband, where I can again work among the flowers and trees every day in the year is, indeed, like turning winter of old age into continual spring.”

Uncle Earl and the Kudzu Vine (part 2) ********** Uncle Earl and the Kudzu Vine (part 3)

More of Lynne’s Musings