Fever-vine has opposite leaves (paired at the nodes) and blooms on new growth in summer. The vine grows quickly to 10 meters (33 feet) in length. Creeping across the ground, it roots at each node; climbing, it invariably twines to the right.

Fever-vine grows equally well in full sun or shade. It is not particular to its soil—sand or clay, dry or wet. It will even survive completely flooded for 6 months. The vine is tough and woody; many vines together form a green shroud.

Fever-vine was introduced to Hawaii in the 1850s and to Florida in 1867. The vine was under consideration as a source of industrial fibers. The project and the plants were abandoned. By 1916, fever-vine was a nuisance in landscape plantings. Out of their native habitat, the vines are more than just a nuisance; they blanket and kill almost every plant they encounter from ferns to pines.

In Florida, it is called skunk vine; in Hawaii, it is maile pilau (the rotten maile, as opposed to the nice vanilla-scented maile). The smell is due to the presence of sulfur compounds like 3-(methylthio) propionaldehyde, kindly described by the Merck Index as a "suffocating odor".

Although there are 30 species of Paederia, the fever-vine was the first of its genus collected and sent to Linnaeus. He named it disparagingly from the Latin paedidus, nasty, filthy, stinking, and foedus, foul, filthy, detestable. Paederia foetida is an extraordinarily descriptive name especially to anyone who has to hack through the vines with a machete.*

* I once spent a week among these vines in a single day!

(Compiled from: "27 Skunk Vine", R.W. Pemberton and P.D. Pratt, Biological Control of Invasive Plants in the Eastern United States, Invasive Plant Research Laboratory, ARS - Fort Lauderdale, USDA; "3-(Methylthio) propionaldehyde", Chemicals Programme, United Nations Environment Programme Publications; W3TROPICOS, J. Solomon, Missouri Botanical Garden.)