East Coasters and Midwesterners once loved Lonicera maackii, better known as Amur honeysuckle. It was introduced into the US in 1898 by Niels E. Hansen, a Lutheran horticulture professor dispatched by the Department of Agriculture to scour the world for exotic plants. He told his students that he felt, as a botanist, he was “doing the Lord’s work.”

Hansen journeyed from Europe to China—by wagon, by train, and, for 700 miles, in a sleigh. He bagged carloads of specimens, shipping them back across the Atlantic. Among the first few hundred seeds was Amur honeysuckle.

The Department of Agriculture liked what it saw in this fast-growing, fruity shrub. It imported more from Britain and from Manchuria, the honeysuckle’s homeland. From the 1930s to the ’80s, the government’s Soil Conservation Service distributed the plant to farmers and landowners across the United States to curb erosion and restore wildlife habitats.

We all make mistakes. By the 1960s, folks from Chicago to Cincinnati were cursing the bush as a weed. Amur honeysuckle, also called bush honeysuckle, spreads like gossip and is nettlesome to eradicate. It leafs earlier than other trees and clings to its leaves longer, robbing native wildflowers and saplings of sunlight. It excretes chemicals into the soil that stunt nearby plants. It boosts tick populations.

In short, Lonicera maackii is the worst. It’s banned from being sold in several states, and at least ten others blacklist it as an invasive species or as a “noxious weed.” Bush honeysuckle simply wears people out. Billy Thomas, a forester at the University of Kentucky, calls it “a booger” and “our old nemesis.” He says for anyone with ears to hear, “If you’ve got one or two plants on your property, now’s the time to get them out of there.”