Common Greenbrier

What is common greenbrier?

Common greenbrier is a native, thorny, woody vine found across the eastern United States. It climbs with tendrils and prickly stems over shrubs and small trees and can knit itself into thickets that are almost impossible to walk through. Reliable common greenbrier identification comes down to a short list: green stems with sharp prickles, glossy rounded leaves with veins running lengthwise, coiling tendrils, and blue-black berries.

In the wild, greenbrier is valuable. Birds, deer and rabbits eat its berries and leaves, and its tangles give cover to small animals. In a landscape it is a different story. It grows well in shade under shrubs, climbs up through them, and smothers them, and its prickles make it miserable to pull. Below ground it stores energy in knobby rhizomes and big tuberous roots, so cutting, burning or a single herbicide treatment rarely finishes it; the plant simply sends up new vines. Control takes persistence over more than one season.

Common Greenbrier identification: what to look for

Look first at the stem: a green, prickly vine with coiling tendrils is almost always a greenbrier. Then check the leaves for shape, shine and vein pattern to separate common greenbrier from its relatives. Wear gloves even when you are just looking closely, because the prickles are sharp.

• Leaves: Simple, alternate, glossy and hairless, round to heart-shaped, about 2 to 5 inches long, with smooth edges. Three to five main veins run from base to tip, and tiny prickles sometimes line the veins underneath.
• Stems and prickles: Green, often sharply four-angled stems with many stiff, scattered prickles up to about a third of an inch long, flat and broad at the base, pale with black tips. Older stems turn dark brown; some stems are nearly thornless.
• Tendrils: Tendrils grow from the base of the leaf stalk. They start out green and flexible, wrap around twigs, then harden in place.
• Flowers: Round clusters of small greenish-white flowers on short stalks from spring into summer. Plants are either male or female.
• Berries: Clusters of round, blue-black berries about a quarter inch across, coated with a whitish bloom, on female plants only. They ripen in late summer and fall and often persist through winter.
• Roots: Knobby, spreading rhizomes and large, starchy tubers below ground.

Where it grows in the United States

Common greenbrier is native to eastern North America. NC State describes its range as Florida north into southern Ontario and Nova Scotia, generally east of Texas, and Virginia Tech's weed guide lists it across the eastern and midwestern states. About two dozen Smilax species are native to North America, and Clemson counts 15 in South Carolina alone, so several kinds may grow together.

It grows in woods with sandy, moist to dry soil, woodland edges, fields, hedgerows, thickets and pond borders, along roadsides and swampy woods, and on drier uplands. It does well in moist shade, which is why it so often turns up under landscape shrubs. Birds and small mammals spread the seeds, and once a seedling roots under a hedge, the rhizomes take over.

Common Greenbrier look-alikes

A few plants get mixed up with it:

• Saw greenbrier (Smilax bona-nox): A close relative that Clemson lists among the most common greenbriers in South Carolina. Its leaves have lobes at the base, are often mottled, and carry small spines along the edges, and mature vines bear larger thorns. Common greenbrier has solid green, rounded leaves with smooth edges.
• Lanceleaf greenbrier (Smilax smallii): A nearly thornless, mostly evergreen greenbrier with shiny green leaves and dull brick-red fruit that turns reddish-brown. It is the one species Clemson considers suitable for home landscapes. Common greenbrier is heavily armed and has blue-black berries.

How to get rid of common greenbrier

Pulling, digging and mowing: Digging works only for a few young plants. The knobby rhizomes and tubers are hard to lift, especially when they are woven into tree and shrub roots, and any piece left behind can send up new vines. For vines growing up through shrubs, cut them near the soil line and pull the tops out carefully, then follow up (see the herbicide notes below) because cutting alone triggers fast regrowth. Repeated cutting of every new shoot weakens the roots over time, but expect it to take more than one season. Wear thick leather gloves, long sleeves and eye protection when handling the prickly vines.

Cultural control matters most, because the right conditions keep it from coming back.

• Check under shrubs and along hedges each spring and remove new seedlings before they build rhizomes and tubers.
• Keep cut vines off the ground in beds; bag or haul them away so prickly stems do not linger where people work.
• Do not count on burning to clear it; Clemson notes the rhizomes regenerate quickly after fire.
• Where it is not in the way, such as woodland edges, leave it for the birds and animals that rely on it.

Herbicides: Clemson Extension notes that greenbrier's waxy leaves shed sprays, so the most reliable approach is to cut the vines and spray the soft regrowth with glyphosate once it is about half a foot to a foot tall; spraying new growth in early spring also works. Where greenbrier is tangled in shrubs you want to keep, cut it near the soil line, pull out the tops, and immediately paint or spray the fresh stumps with glyphosate, keeping it off the landscape plants; glyphosate has little soil activity. Triclopyr can be used on foliage or fresh cuts, but it has some soil activity, so keep it away from desirable plants. Lawn broadleaf products containing triclopyr can control greenbrier in established tall fescue. Plan on repeat treatments. Use only a product labeled for your site; the label is the law. If you hire someone to spray, make sure they hold your state’s pesticide applicator license; the rules for each state are in our pesticide applicator license guide.

Keeping it from coming back

Many new greenbrier plants start from seeds spread by birds and small mammals, especially under shrubs and hedges. Walk those areas each spring and summer and pull or dig seedlings while they are small, before they form the tubers and rhizomes that make older plants so stubborn.

On properties next to woods, treat greenbrier control as routine maintenance rather than a one-time job. Catching new vines when they are a few inches tall is far easier than untangling a mature plant from the middle of a shrub.

Questions we get about common greenbrier

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