FIELD ID CHARACTERISTICS:
Underside of leaves green with spineless midrib; wide leaves, relative to many other Smilax species.
Description: High climbing, semi-evergreen, thorny vine with green stems and tendrils.
Leaves: Alternate, simple, shiny, ovate to circular and pointed at the tip, sometimes quite large, with short petioles. Underside green with a spineless midrib. Leaves not very leathery.
Flowers/Fruit: Stalks of umbel with light green flowers not longer than leaf petioles, as in Smilax bona-nox (saw greenbrier). Fruits blue-black berries, persisting into winter. Flowers late April/ May; fruits September to November.
Habit and Range: Dry-mesic to mesic forests, bottomland and riparian forests, swamps, pond margins, pine wetlands, old fields, fencerows, roadsides. Found statewide.
COMMON CONFUSIONS:
Sometimes Smilax rotundifolia (roundleaf greenbrier) has triangular shaped leaves like S. bona-nox (saw greenbrier), but S. bona-nox has prickles on the leaves. S. rotundifolia can also be confused with the non-native Clematis terniflora (autumn clematis) which has similar leaves and similar flowers, but which blooms in the fall and has no thorns. The flattened, orange, bristled fruits in Clematis terniflora are very different from S. rotundifolia as well.
Click here to view Smilax bona-nox.
Link to side-by-side comparisons page
