Article by Ryan Adkins, RGS & AWS Forest Wildlife Specialist – Southwest Virginia
As a forester and habitat manager, I tend to have a love/hate relationship with common greenbrier (Smilax rotundifolia). Unfortunately, greenbrier makes for a dense obstacle when navigating across eastern hardwood forests in Southern Appalachia. As a common resource for many wildlife species, greenbrier is resilient and a constant staple cover of mixed oak forests in the region. Although these annoyances may extort a groan and sigh as I’m marching between the ridges of southwest Virginia, for other critters, this isn’t the case.
Tangled Up in Green
There isn’t much to do when navigating through vines over your head in the woods, but this is one of the most important life requisites for many wildlife species in the Appalachian region, especially ruffed grouse. When establishing uneven aged forests, we can open the canopy to increase the amount of light that’s reaching the forest floor. This process promotes greenbrier to sprout and wrap around oak/hickory stands, almost seeming to eventually cover the entire forest with its vines. This cover provides grouse with protection from harsh weather and other predators. The leaves and sprouts of greenbrier are used by wildlife as an excellent source of food, especially for ruffed grouse. Greenbriar may seem like a nuisance to us, but it’s a reliable source of protection and nourishment, and is able to survive in low-light conditions in mature forests.
Working Together
Fortunately, all of the active management we do indirectly promotes the early successional habitat requirements that greenbrier needs to flourish. Logging activities and creation of patchy light pockets to the floor allow for greenbrier to dominate. Implementing fire to this fire-adapted species allows for rhizomes to shoot after being top killed with a burn. This gives greenbrier sprouts an aggressive push, using their vines to reach as far wide as they do high across the entire landscape. Although greenbrier doesn’t necessarily require a fixed soil and moisture composition, being a generalist species, the greenbrier sits in a perfect ecozone of nutrient balanced and sufficient resource allocation in the Appalachian region, especially in southwest Virginia.
Making Amends
Although my advocacy tends to be in favor of greenbrier, I do understand the awkward relationship. Getting in and out of a greenbrier thicket can be slow, thorny and a real issue at times. However, it’s important to remember that smilax brings a reliable support system for ruffed grouse and many other species that utilize its cover and resources. As managers, we don’t specifically target greenbrier in a working mechanism when we’re selecting properties of a forest to enhance, but the significant push from the species is a passive byproduct of the canopy restructuring. This is only one of the pieces of the natural word that tends to work together with a common goal. If we’re protecting and advancing forestry practices for habitat management, the forest will do its part to help us.
