brier vs. bramble

In my previous post I mentioned my battle with brambles and referred to brier in passing.  Coincidentally, that evening I happened to listen to the Ballad of Barbara Allen in which the suitor dies from unrequited love for Barbara Allen.  From his grave a rose grows and from hers a briar.  The brier I just dug out and photographed is from the genus Smilax and got its name from Greek mythology.  Krokus, a mortal man, tragically loved the woodland nymph Smilax and on his death he was turned into a flower and she into a prickly vine.  And that is how the thorny vine I find in my growing area was given the Latin name Smilax.

Unlike brambles which have shallow horizontal running roots, this brier is more formidable.  It holds its resources in large tubers about 8 inches below ground level.  In the photograph below the pencil points to ground level and you can see the size of the tubers and their distance from ground level.

brier with roots
a youngish brier I dug out of the vegetable patch. the tubers are large in relation to the plant. the thorns on the larger briers in the adjacent woods are like barbed wire

My previous attempts to eliminate the brier failed because I did not know how it operated.  I would dig up the accessible roots and think, with my perseverance, it would fade away.  I now know I have to dig much deeper and locate and remove the tubers, to succeed.

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