The villain is a large, evergreen shrub or small tree called Chinese privet (Ligustrum sinense), which is very invasive in the southern U.S. It's worse than kudzu because kudzu needs sun to grow.

This photo shows a semi-invasive brain-machine interface (BMI) at a press conference held by the Chinese Institute for Brain Research, Beijing (CIBR) and NeuCyber NeuroTech (Beijing) Co., Ltd. in ...