Native Plants

Q. Who is Mr. Smarty Plants?

A: There are those who suspect Wildflower Center volunteers are the culpable and capable culprits. Yet, others think staff members play some, albeit small, role. You can torture us with your plant questions, but we will never reveal the Green Guru's secret identity.

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Tuesday - June 02, 2009

From: molino, FL
Region: Southeast
Topic: Vines
Title: Identity of a thorny vine in Florida
Answered by: Jimmy Mills

QUESTION:

Area: panhandle of FL Problem: thorny vine with large potato like roots, rapid growing and very invasive. grows in summer time. thanks

ANSWER:

Identifying plants from a description can be difficult if not impossible ,but Mr. Smarty Plants thinks this could be cat briar Smilax bona-nox (saw greenbrier) which is distributed across the Southeastern US, or one of its siblings in the genus Smilax.

We're going to try a two step approach: first, I've found some websites with descriptions and images of this plant. Check these out to see if your plant resembles any of the images.

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