Can you identify a plant growing at my mother’s house in Georgia? We would like to know more about it.
This is Smilax bona-nox. It goes by many evocative names, and even the scientific name had me wondering. Why is the species name “good-night?” It was named by Linnaeus and in his time bona-nox would have served as a euphemistic Latin curse (the way someone might say dadgummit, goldarnit, or flipping heck), possibly uttered after getting ensnared in this viny plant’s thorns. According to Delena Tull, author of Edible and Useful Plants of Texas and the Southwest (1999 ed.), encounters with the curved prickles give rise to common names like catbrier (or catbriar) and blaspheme-vine. Other common names include saw greenbrier (or saw briar) and tramp’s trouble. It is also called zarzaparilla (Anglicized to sarsaparilla from the Spanish name which means bramble + little grape vine).
According to the Virginia Native Plant Society, the fruit of Smilax species is valued by birds, bears, foxes, possums, and squirrels. The flowers are nectar and pollen sources for bees and flies, and the leaves host the larvae of caterpillar moths. The Native American Ethnobotany Database lists medicinal uses of this species of Smilax by the Seminole, Choctaw, Houma, and Creek tribes. The Choctaw and Houma ground the dried tuberous roots into flour for use in bread and cakes. The Comanche used the leaves as cigarette rolling papers.
About the common name sarsaparilla, you may be familiar with this word as flavoring sometimes used in the beverage known as root beer. A traditional tonic made with the rhizomes was thought to ward off rheumatism. Both Smilax and Sassafras have been used in flavoring root beer, but Sassafras root bark contains safrole, a carcinogenic substance, and the Food and Drug Administration banned its use in food in 1960. There is now a safrole-free extract that is allowed in food.