Reflections in Nature: Bittersweet vine gets name from its inner bark
A few years ago, before COVID, we had family coming for Thanksgiving and Mary Alice had begun decorating our mantle for fall. One day as I was heading out the door, Mary Alice asked if I would cut some bittersweet for her to use.
I said, “Are you sure?” I remembered the bittersweet mess we had a few years ago.
That year I had cut a large bundle of bittersweet vines to surprise her. I carried the bundle into the house and put it by the fireplace so she could decorate the mantle. What I didn’t know was that I had left a trail of bittersweet husks throughout the house. Since that episode I have learned my lesson, and now, I leave the bittersweet on the porch.
By the middle of November, we usually have had a hard frost, and the leaves of the bittersweet have dropped from the vine. After this occurs, the tan outer husks of the berries split open and curl back, revealing the bright orange berries that stand out in the otherwise drab November woods.
The bittersweet vine climbs up whatever is available, such as a tree, shrub and even a tall weed. The vine continues to climb to the top and then searches for something higher. New stems often twine around each other, forming a braided vine that supports itself as it reaches out into space.
The vine climbs by clinging and twining round and round and never loses its grip on the host plant. Vines can kill young trees. A tree hugged to death by bittersweet could have grooves that are over a half-inch deep all the way up its trunk. Once the vine is cut away the wood appears as if it grew in a corkscrew like fashion. Many times, the wood will become someone’s walking cane.
We have two types of bittersweet growing in Pennsylvania. One is our native bittersweet Celastrus scandens, which is commonly called American bittersweet. American bittersweet is not abundant in our area due to being difficult to cultivate, and in the wild, this bittersweet has suffered from over-cutting. American bittersweet has a lance-shaped leaf, with the berries growing on the end of the vine.
The second type is the oriental bittersweet Celastrus orbiculatus, which is also known as round-leafed bittersweet. This bittersweet has been particularly hard on the American bittersweet because it is easy to grow.
It will grow in a wide variety of habitats and has berries growing all along the vine, making it more pleasing to gardeners and decorators.The color of the arils (coating around the red fruit) is different on the two plants. In the American bittersweet, the coating is orange, and in the oriental variety, the coating is either a tan or light yellow.
Since the American bittersweet is scarce due to extensive picking, one should learn to tell the difference between the two species and only pick the oriental type. Be careful to leave enough of the plant to ensure survival. Of course, permission is needed from the landowner.
In the prosperous suburbs around New York City, the oriental bittersweet has become a problem that has been compared to the kudzu (mile a minute plant). Brigades of anti-bittersweet volunteers spend their weekends tearing out the oriental bittersweet. What isn’t used to make decorative wreaths is destroyed.
The name bittersweet is said to come from the vine’s inner bark, which is said to have a bitter-sweet taste. One book stated that it has many medicinal abilities, including the treatment for cancer, liver, skin ailments and rheumatism. In olden days, the bittersweet berries were crushed and then applied to warts and other skin conditions; however, a warning from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention has bittersweet listed as a toxic plant.
Aldo Leopold wrote, in Sands County Almanac, “I like the bittersweet because my father did, and because deer, on the first of July each year, begin suddenly to eat the new leaves, and I have learned to predict this event to my quests. I cannot dislike a plant that enables me, a mere professor, to blossom forth annually as a successful seer and prophet.”
If you mention bittersweet to some people, they think you are talking about nightshade Solanum dulcamara, which also carries the common name of bittersweet. In his writing Wild Fruits, which was never completed, Henry David Thoreau wrote, “The bittersweet berries begin July 28th and are in their prime in August and September. The bright red berries are still handsomer than the flowers. This is one of the kinds that grow in drooping clusters, and I do not know any more graceful and beautiful clusters than these.”
Thoreau was not writing about our bittersweet but nightshade, again pointing to the confusion when using common names.
There are over 1,000 species of nightshad, however only 30 kinds are found in our country. In the northeast, we have only two species: the black nightshade Solanum nigrum and the red-berried bittersweet nightshade Solanum dulcamara.
Bill Bower is a retired Pennsylvania Game Commission Wildlife Officer. Read his blog and listen to his podcasts on the outdoors at www.onemaningreen.com.