Taxonomy and Nomenclature
Five species in the genus Pueraria are closely related and the name kudzu describes one or more of them. They are P. montana, P. lobata, P. edulis, P. phaseoloides and P. thomsoni. The morphological differences between the four species are subtle, they can breed with each other, and it appears that introduced kudzu populations in the United States have ancestry from more than one of the species. The name Pueraria thunbergiana is a synonym for Pueraria montana var. lobata. P. tuberosa, a species from the Indian subcontinent, is also known as kudzu.
Read more about this topic: Kudzu