Laurelleaf Greenbrier Traditional Cache

Laurelleaf Greenbrier is one of 20 species of the prickly vine in the US. The pictures here are all of the Laurelleaf variety. You can park nearby at a pull off from Pine St. across from the church, before the street becomes two lanes. BYOP and please read the description at the bottom of the page.

Smilax is a genus of about 300–350 species, found in the tropics and subtropics. There are 20 in North America north of Mexico. They are climbing flowering plants, many of which are woody and/or thorny, in the monocotyledon family Smilacaceae. Common names include catbriers, greenbriers, prickly-ivys and smilaxes. "Sarsaparilla" (also zarzaparrilla, sarsparilla) is a name used specifically for the Jamaican S. regelii as well as a catch-all term in particular for American species.

Occasionally, the non-woody species such as the smooth herbaceous greenbrier (S. herbacea) are separated as genus Nemexia; they are commonly known by the rather ambiguous name "carrion flowers".

Greenbriers get their scientific name from the Greek myth of Crocus and the nymph Smilax .Though this myth has numerous forms, it always centers around the unfulfilled and tragic love of a mortal man who is turned into a flower, and a woodland nymph who is transformed into a brambly vine.

Description and ecology

On their own, Smilax plants will grow as shrubs, forming dense impenetrable thickets. They will also grow over trees and other plants up to 10 m high, their hooked thorns allowing them to hang onto and scramble over branches. The genus includes both deciduous and evergreen species. The leaves are heart shaped and vary from 4–30 cm long in different species.

Greenbrier is dioecious. However, only about one in three colonies have plants of both sexes. Plants flower in May and June with white/green clustered flowers. If pollination occurs, the plant will produce a bright red to blue-black spherical berry fruit about 5–10 mm in diameter that matures in the fall.

The berry is rubbery in texture and has a large, spherical seed in the center. The fruit stays intact through winter, when birds and other animals eat them to survive. The seeds are passed unharmed in the animal's droppings. Since many Smilax colonies are single clones that have spread by rhizomes, both sexes may not be present at a site, in which case no fruit is formed.

Smilax is a very damage-tolerant plant capable of growing back from its rhizomes after being cut down or burned down by fire. This, coupled with the fact that birds and other small animals spread the seeds over large areas, makes the plants very hard to get rid of. It grows best in moist woodlands with a soil pH between 5 and 6. The seeds have the greatest chance of germinating after being exposed to a freeze.

Laurelleaf Greenbrier

Smilax laurifolia is a species of flowering plant in the greenbrier family known by the common names laurel greenbrier laurelleaf greenbrier, bamboo vine, and blaspheme vine. It is native to the southeastern United States, where it occurs along the Gulf and Atlantic coastal plains from Texas to NewJersey, the range extending inland to Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. It also occurs in Cuba and the Bahamas.

This plant is a monocotyledonous woody vine that forms dense colonial thickets and climbs over other vegetation. The stems reach five meters or more in length. They are "viciously armed" with prickles that may be over a centimeter long. The plant grows from a huge woody, tuberous rhizome. The sprouts may grow up to 7 centimeters per day.

The leathery evergreen leaves are linear, lance-shaped, or oval and reach 13 centimeters long by 6 wide. The petioles twist to bear the leaves in an erect position.

The inflorescence is an umbel of up to 25 flowers borne in the leaf axils. Each flower has whitish or yellowish tepals each about half a centimeter long. The fruit is a shiny, waxy black berry 5 to 8 millimeters long. The berries mature in the second growing season after they first appear.

This plant grows in bogs, swamps, and marshy areas. It is a dominant plant in pocosins. The soils are wet to saturated and the sites are often flooded. It is common in the Everglades and it is "characteristic" of the Okefenokee Swamp understory flora. It grows beneath cyprus, swamp blackgum (N. sylvatica), white bay (Magnolia virginiana), loblolly bay (Gordonia lasianthus), sweet bay (Persea borbonia), red maple (Acer rubrum), cassena (Ilex cassine), titi (Cyrilla racemiflora), and southern white cedar (Chamaecyparis thyoides). In the understory it is associated with hurrahbush (Lyonia lucida), leucothoe (Leucothoe racemosa), sweetspire (Itea virginica), poor-man’s soap (Clethra alnifolia), coral greenbrier (S. walteri), and honeycup (Zenobia pulverulenta).

This plant competes with and inhibits tree seedlings such as those of southern white cedar. In sunny sites it grows better and can form dense thickets. When burned or damaged it resprouts vigorously from its large rhizome. This rapidly climbing vine is a silvicultural pest.

This plant provides habitat for many types of animals, such as white-tailed deer, bobcat, gray squirrel, Eastern diamondback rattlesnake, American alligator, pine barrens tree frog, and the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker.

Native American groups used this plant medicinally. For example, the Cherokee used it for sores and burns. The tuberous rhizome was also a food source; the Choctaw made it into fried cakes and bread.

The cache is a tied in, camoed, "small", easy to open, pill bottle. You need to BYOP and please keep track of, and replace the rubber band around the log. The plastic bag needs attention, to make sure it's sealed correctly. Please.