Catbrier Wars
Fighting in the Trenches
Summers in Florida, are without doubt, designed for shorts, t-shirts, and sandals, but for doing fieldwork in the piney flatwoods, this attire is less than ideal, largely because of the abundance of catbrier vines in the ground cover in many places. At the very least, it is a good idea to wear socks in one's sandals, lest one's feet and ankles end up looking as though a herd of cats had sharpened their claws on them. Even then, there is a characteristic "flat woods-in-shorts" gait, a kind of high stepping, up-and-over sort of walk without the usual forward swing you would see on a city sidewalk. Running in the flatwoods is a very bad idea, unless of course a mamma black bear is hard on your heels because you just snuggled her cub while she was busting rotten logs just out of sight. In that circumstance, lacerated legs would seem like a lesser issue.
Catbriers belong to the genus Smilax, with about a dozen North American species, most of them spiny vines. Most of the nine Florida species can climb bushes or even tall trees, grabbing their way up with curling tendrils that curl and snug up tight on contact, but some are no taller than a foot or two. All Smilax bear clusters of little white flowers followed by dark berries. The shoots of the larger species can be eaten like asparagus. The vines sprout from a lumpy underground rhizome that can be as big as your head, sprouting more vines every year, especially after fires, allowing them to make the extensive low tangles of spiny vines that make some parts of the flatwoods such tricky going.
In another demonstration of the neutrality of nature, many catbriers are rather beautiful despite their spiny nastiness. The regular arrays of glossy leaves, dark berry clusters and delicate tendrils are as pleasing to the eye as the thorns are threatening to the skin. One small ground-hugging species, Smilax pumila has red berries and turns a beautiful red in the fall. Smilax species occur in a wide range of habitats, including yards such as ours. Our resident catbrier was a very vigorous vine and so pretty, I felt I had to draw it.
Every spring, it and several other catbriers in our front yard sent up shoots as thick as a thumb and climbed up into the top of our mid-sized magnolia tree to cover it with such dense and heavy foliage that the top of the magnolia failed to grow under the shade and weight, its besieged leader bent over and confused. True, the offending catbrier was a beautiful vine, as you can see in my drawing above, but every year, I put on heavy leather gloves and yanked, pulled, jerked, and cursed until I had freed the magnolia and a neighboring flowering plum from a huge mass of catbrier foliage. No doubt, the trees heaved a sigh of relief and enjoyed the light they had missed for months. I never felt real pangs about pulling down the vines because in the following spring, there they were again, shoots as thick as my thumb, elongating a foot a day as they sped (by plant standards) up into the crown of our magnolia and plum.
But one year, I decided that complete removal of the vine was what was needed, and that meant digging up the rhizome. Therefore, the Found Object for today could more realistically be called a Dug Object. The rhizome, of course, wasn’t out in the open, away from other valued plantings such as azaleas and English dogwoods. No, as I began to dig, I could see its rhizomes snaking under several bushes. This was going to be hand-trowel work, not spade, mattock or shovel work, burrowing like an aardvark around and under, revealing the ever-greater complexity of the rhizome. With one branch exposed, more branches came into view, some going to greater depth, others to greater breadth. Grunting and sweating, I began to elicit the aid of a six-foot-long, iron pry bar to break the hold of the rhizome on the earth. I began an encircling campaign from the other side, hoping to force a surrender. It was a slow trench war, hand-to-rhizome combat, but after many hours of rhizome vs. man, I emerged victorious, and the multi-branching underground combatant was mine. Like a hunter, I posed with my vanquished prey.
Cleaned of soil, the rhizome cluster was ready to be displayed in the Museum of Modern Art, where it would have raised the level of the art significantly. Although it hides underground, the rhizome is really a swollen underground stem rather than a root. New growth clearly shows leaf (or bract) scars and the remains of bracts that are very similar to what we see on the emerging vine itself. Not everything that looks like a root is really a root. Take the potato, for example--- it too is a swollen underground stem. Potatoes are, of course, eminently edible, but I don’t know if that is true of the catbrier rhizome, but if it is, you must be prepared to chew a lot of fibers.
For the next ten years, the catbrier made it clear that my victory was an illusion. Every year, it sent up multiple shoots as thick as a thumb that climbed up to smother the magnolia and plum, and every year in late summer, I pulled and jerked the vines back down. Despite the huge rhizome I had bagged in the Catbrier War One, there was a lot more lurking underground. So, after a few years, I unilaterally violated the peace treaty and declared war again. It was much like the first war, with branch after rhizome branch exposed as I trenched, grunted, sweated, and pried. Catbrier War Two lasted several days and created a maze of trenches along with several tunnels under valued bushes. But I had the advantage of mobility, and the catbrier did not, and I finally dug and leveraged up rhizomes until I could find no more. This time, the war ended with a complete victory for me, for since then, no thick shoots have emerged to climb my trees.
With the pieces laid out, it was clear that this catbrier was the growth of many years, a plant that probably predated our purchase of the house more than 30 years ago. As best I remember, our purchase contract said nothing about transferring ownership of a fine and healthy catbrier, but maybe it was in the fine print that we failed to read.
But how old was it really? There were no growth rings and no other readily legible indicators of age. When perennial plants regularly regrow from underground rhizomes, root crowns or tubers, to what entity do we assign age? Is the meaningful age that of the rhizome, ignoring the luxurient growth that springs from it? Did I cut short a catbrier life that might have been measured in centuries? I would like to think I did not. If I were to cut down the magnolia that provided the scaffold for the catbrier, growth rings would tell me the exact age of the trunk. We readily accept that this is the “true” age of the magnolia. We equally readily assign an age to ourselves and other animals. Indeed, age is a major part of our identity, despite the fact that our various component parts are constantly being turned over and replaced, cell by cell, molecule by molecule. To what entity are we assigning an age when none of our parts last very long? What, exactly, is that entity that we call “us”, or “catbrier” or “magnolia?”
