What is "smilax"

Sarsaparilla \Sar`sa*pa*ril"la\, n. [Sp. zarzaparrilla; zarza a bramble (perhaps fr. Bisc. zartzia) + parra a vine, or Parillo, a physician said to have discovered it.] (Bot.)

1. Any plant of several tropical American species of Smilax.

2. The bitter mucilaginous roots of such plants, used in medicine and in sirups for soda, etc.

   Note: The name is also applied to many other plants and their roots, especially to the Aralia nudicaulis, the wild sarsaparilla of the United States.

Smilax \Smi"lax\, n. [L., bindweed, Gr. ???.] (Bot.)

1. A genus of perennial climbing plants, usually with a prickly woody stem; green brier, or cat brier. The rootstocks of certain species are the source of the medicine called sarsaparilla.

2. A delicate trailing plant ( Myrsiphyllum asparagoides) much used for decoration. It is a native of the Cape of Good Hope.

type of lilaceous plant, c.1600, from Latin, from Greek smilax "blindweed," also used of the yew and a kind of evergreen oak.

n. Any member of the ''Smilax'' genus of greenbriers.

Smilax is a genus of about 300–350 species, found in the tropics and subtropics worldwide. In China for example about 80 are found (39 of which are endemic), while 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, native throughout the tropical and subtropical regions of the world. 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.