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HOW TO ERADICATE SMILAX-BONA-NOX (bull vine/devil vine). Smilax bona-nix is not only a nuisance, it is long-lived and invasive. Our property was over-run with this noxious vine. Many of the vines had thick, woody bases that branched out in multiple leafy, thorny vines across the canopy of trees by a creek. Digging out the root exposed small, white, potato-like clusters from which rhizomes shot off in all directions. The vine is so prolific, digging out the roots may not be an option. By the hardest, we pulled the vines down from the trees and cut them off to the ground. A couple of times each month, new shoots were relentlessly snipped to the ground before they produced leaves. Hand-hand gardening clippers are more effective than weed-eater cutting. It required a couple of seasons of systematically depriving the vines of photo-synthesis when, much to my surprise, the shoots dwindled in frequency, and then there were none! We have also used this method on other properties with similar success.