Bittersweet - does it have any useful properties?

This plant is my personal nemesis. Grows out of control, climbs everything - tear it out by the roots and it just keeps crawling back and continuing. and as far as I know it is good for absolutely nothing.

Can anyone tell me about some potential value and useful quality to this, imo, worse than worthless plant?

Bittersweet with orange berries? I remember it growing rampant in Illinos along fences and my mother would cut all she could and make wreaths for fall decorations...she gave them as gifts. There might be some sort of niche craft market for the vine. I thought I remember being told the berries were poisonous/toxic. Might be great vine basket material with or without the berries.

Do you know if you have American Bittersweet (Celastrus scandens L.) or Woody Nightshade Bittersweet (Solanum dulcamara L.) ? Both are listed in my Peterson Medicinal Plant guide with lots of medicinal properties and both have warnings as to their high toxicity.

The way it's described as horribly rampant an a "nemesis" sounds like Oriental bittersweet. Yes, that is used for ornamental wreaths, but the problem is if that the poor recipient of the charming ornamental wreath is a good girl and throws it in her compost heap after the season ends, and now you've shared your invasive problem with her, not only your wreath.

My experience is that bittersweet is very hard to eradicate completely but if you pull up as much of the (distinctively orange) root as you can, you can seriously weaken it, so that if you do this once or twice a year you can keep it from climbing over and killing your trees. Of course conventional websites say to treat it with topical herbicide such as Round-Up, in order to kill more of the root, but I'm not willing to do that, especially since I'm pulling it out from under beloved trees.

I'm wondering if a topical treatment of the fresh stump with vinegar might help weaken the root a bit? I understand that vinegar gets digested by the environment, unlike salt, which will ruin the soil for future plants.

I have a lot of Oriental Bittersweet growing around my yard and nearby woods. Maybe it could be useful though:
"OTHER USES:
Medicine and other products: Oriental bittersweet is an Asian folk medicine used for treating rheumatoid arthritis and bacterial infections. Medical and pharmacological studies show that Oriental bittersweet derivatives have antitumor, antiinflammatory, antioxidant, antibacterial, and insecticidal properties [66,67,108]. One Oriental bittersweet derivative shows ability to reverse multidrug resistance of cancer cells to cancer-treatment drugs [75,76]." Info from a forest service website.

Right, but I don't think there's any market for it.

Just make sure it doesn't climb up your trees and smother them, as it has done to several of ours when we didn't pay attention.

Is this the one that the flowers smell like chocolate? My mother is wanting to grow

It is easy enough to eradicate in these winners with erratic weather. You do need to pull up the roots but luckily the roots are bright orange so they are easy to notice.

Our area is terribly infested, it kills trees all over. My property was infested like everywhere else before I set myself to work at it but I feel no worry about bittersweet after about three years of effort, mostly in winter when the ground melts. Thanks climate change!

I've looked into it extensively and there is nothing I need live bittersweet for. I do toss thick stems into hugelbeets.

I have been put off from building a hugelbeet in an area where there was still some bittersweet you'd have to pull the whole thing apart if there was bittersweet in there.

Wild turkeys love the berries but I've heard that there is little nutrition in the seeds so it's not good for the turkeys after all.

Birds love the stuff! And some people (admittedly silly people) will buy it for decorating in fall and winter.

I just was pulling some off a viburnum and was wondering if it was useful in any way.  I ran across a site describing how to make oriental bittersweet tea from dried roots and stems.  I'm going to go back to where I left the vines I removed and chop them up to dry.  Will let you all know what I think of it in a few weeks after I try it.

The article says:
"I was surprised at the subtle and delicious taste it has, that resembled the dark twig tea of a tea plant, only without the caffeine. Instead, the drink is full of healing goodness and I couldn’t stop having a cup after cup all day, feeling like something very subtle is being fixed inside me."
and
"After collecting the bright orange roots and woody vine, soak and wash them well, slice with pruning shears into smaller pieces and let dry at a room temperature for a few weeks. Keep in paper bag for a future use.
Oriental Bittersweet tea
To make tea, boil 1 tbs. dry material in 2 cups water for 5-10 minutes and let cool. It has pleasant neutral flavor and feels very good."

It would be nice to be harvesting rather than just working to remove it.  Usually I just hang the vines I remove in trees to dry out and die.

Here is an article I wrote on harvesting bittersweet for weaving




I have been weaving baskets for just a few months and figured I’d catalog the nature of bittersweet when used for weaving as I have discovered. Nearly all of my foraged baskets are made of bittersweet; it feels wasteful harvesting native plants while bittersweet is abundant.

Functions of Bittersweet.

You do not have to go far for bittersweet. If there is green, there is bittersweet. But bittersweet has different properties depending on where it grows.  

Some may notice that while the Asian Bittersweet is also called the ‘round-leaf’ bittersweet, it can have teardrop leaves like the American bittersweet. I'd go as far to say that most of the leaves behave in this manner. You can still find the round leaves growing on the same plant as the tapered ones, I think it has something to do with the amount of shade a particular vine is exposed to. The round leaves are typically covered and do not need as many resources as the exposed leaves.  

I have found bittersweet in three types of locations; climbing, shrub, and trellis. Climbing is typically referring to when the vine is working on overtaking a tree. Climbing bittersweet is the best to harvest for a couple reasons...

1. Climbing bittersweet is doing the most active damage to the ecosystem; the vine will eventually kill the tree and spread beyond reach from the ground.

2. Climbing bittersweet is the best for weaving. The vines are more flexible, more uniform in diameter, and have fewer branching vines where they are shaded.

Shrub bittersweet is where the plant is growing from the ground and has not yet found a structure to climb up. These vines are not as useful as the climbing bittersweet, but they do have their place for a crafty individual. The vines are tapered, stiff, and more brittle; not ideal for use in weavers but great as ribs/spokes of baskets. They are flexible enough for use in wreaths and often hold the most berries. The vines are tapered but because the vines are not in climbing behavior, they tend not to have as many bends or twists, making them good for harvesting the bark for cordage.

Trellised bittersweet is typically when they are climbing fences or similar structures; I have yet to find a good use for these vines. The constant twists and anchors make it nearly impossible to remove one piece and poor for weaving. I recommend you cut the base and remove the root.

Basket weaving is a smart use for it. The climbing vines really are the bendy ones, and that stuff never stops growing lol