FIELD ID CHARACTERISTICS:
Attractive heart-shaped or hastate leaves, often mottled and rimmed with bristles.
Description: Semi-evergreen, thorny vine with triangular-shaped leaves. Stem is slightly square.
Leaves: Alternate, leathery heart-shaped leaves usually with small spines around leaf edges. Mottled green leaves 10 cm long and 8 cm wide. Underside light green.
Flowers/Fruit: Small flowers in umbels, producing black, grape-like berries. Stalks of flowering umbels longer than leaf petioles. Flowers late April to May; fruits September into November.
Habit and Range: Upland woods, floodplains, bay forests, pine flats and in cutover areas. Found throughout the state, but most commonly in the Coastal Plain.
COMMON CONFUSIONS:
Sometimes Smilax rotundifolia (roundleaf greenbrier) can have similar triangular shaped leaves to S. bona-nox (saw greenbrier), but S. rotundifolia has no prickles on leaves.
Click here to view Smilax rotundifolia.
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