I have to be vigilant about this vine in my yard, but I can't say it's encroaching from outside--it was planted at my house many years ago and seeded itself around. I think the majority of it is finally gone after excavation for a patio, but I still have to yank it several times a year, especially under a big rhododendron. At one time it was snaking all over my back yard, if you pulled on one end of it yards and yards of it came up.

It pops up in shrub borders here.

I'm currently in the middle of (slowly) hacking down a big row of ancient forsythia, in order to get to the roots of a few bittersweet vines that have self-seeded themselves in the middle. I didn't notice them until they scaled a Magnolia virginiana behind the forsythias, and now I've got a massive pruning job, just to find where the darn vines are coming from. The forsythia will rebound in a year or so, but if I don't get the magnolia out from under the bittersweet, it will be seriously maimed - just hoping it will recover if I get to it this winter.

I just discovered bittersweet growing in a shrub in my front foundation planting. It started growing into the shrub and up behind it onto the house. I noticed it when I saw the berries on the front of the shrub and I was scratching my head, wondering how my shrub suddenly started producing berries. [g] They were in the beginning stages, just hard green balls and I didn't recognize it as bittersweet. I did get in there in the fall and ripped it off the house and followed it back to the middle of my Itea and cut it back to a foot off the ground. I am planning to redo that whole section of shrub border any way but I'm undecided about what I will do in the spring. The itea was great for keeping the height below a window, but it suckers a lot and it has outgrown it's space there.

My neighbor has one growing unattended over a chainlink fence. Grrrr! They rarely ever step foot in their yard. But this is the first time it has seeded on my property. So, how do I get the stump and root of it out of the middle of the Itea? I am considering just throwing the whole Itea out and hiring someone with a bobcat to just come in and dig the whole area out. The Itea was going to be given away anyway and the rest of the shrubs are throw aways. An old Taxus and a Euonymous alata that were here when we moved in.

I've been battling this nasty vine oriental bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus) for at least 5 years here! It is one of my pet peeves. The previous owner "planted" this, when she threw out some Xmas decorations using the berries and they sprouted. I have removed most but not all from this lot but it has spread all over the neighborhood. Sometimes I will carry a folding saw and cut large vines as I walk around the neighborhood and woodlands.

PM2, you don't have to remove the shrub to get rid of the bittersweet. You can cut the vine at the base and quickly apply a concentrated brush killer to the cut stump. Then just let the vine die and rot. This is true for vines that are growing up into the canopies of trees as well. I have unwound it and cut it off from trees or shrubs that were accessible, but within a few years it will dry out and can be pulled off fairly easily.

Here are some pics from my neighborhood to show the extent of this problem. Vines growing over my next-door neighbor's Pines - he has given me permission to cut his vines, which I started doing last fall -
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Smothering a tree and shrubbery along the edge of a nearby field -
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Here are a couple large vines that twisted around each other in their ascent. Some of the vines are big and old - upwards of 4 inches diameter!

terrene: Those photos certainly illustrate the potential for extreme damage to native trees and other growth. I'm guessing these things are seeded by birds depositing the berries as well. I also suspect that this thing thrives in soils of relatively poorer condition as well; they really seem to take off in gullies, creek beds, adjacent to railroad beds, etc.

What is the difference between the oriental and the native?

The native, American bittersweet (Celastrus scandens), doesn't seem to seed around so prolifically. Maybe it has natural critters that eat it to keep it in check. I have read that it doesn't grow as vigorously, doesn't have as many seeds and those it produces aren't as bright, so the birds may not find them as well. (Birds eating the berries and pooping out the seeds is the major way it is spread.) The oriental is a bit showier, but a LOT more problem. The berries on American bittersweet are only in clusters at the tips of the branches, while on the oriental they grow in short clusters in the leaf axils along the stems. The leaves of the oriental are more round than those of the native. Both kinds have separate female (berry-bearing) and male (no berries) plants.

And, according to something I read on this forum, they've cross-pollinated, so a vine that looks like the relatively innocuous native may still be a thug.

I see it climbing over trees (like the picture above) on untended land around here. Luckily I don't have any in my yard. There is some on our property border, but it doesn't seem to be getting any bigger, and it's not volunteering itself elsewhere. I would cut it down, but the neighbors have let some poison ivy get bad over there and I fear that more than the bittersweet!