1. Eurasian rose with prickly stems, fragrant leaves, and bright pink flowers followed by scarlet hips
   "brier is also known as eglantine";
   - sweetbrier, sweetbriar, briar, eglantine, Rosa eglanteria
    
2. A very prickly woody vine of the eastern United States growing in tangled masses having tough round stems with shiny leathery leaves and small greenish flowers followed by clusters of inedible shiny black berries
   "Hikers carefully avoided the thorny thickets of horse brier";
   - bullbrier, greenbrier, catbrier, horse brier, horse-brier, briar, Smilax rotundifolia
    
3. Tangled mass of prickly plants
   "The rabbit disappeared into the brier";
   - brierpatch, brier patch
    
4. A thorny stem or twig
   "He scratched his arm on a brier while hiking through the woods"
    
5. Evergreen treelike Mediterranean shrub having fragrant white flowers in large terminal panicles and hard woody roots used to make tobacco pipes
   "Craftsmen carved the brier roots into elegant smoking pipes";
   - tree heath, briar, Erica arborea

Derived forms: briers

Type of: botany, branchlet, erica, flora, rose, rosebush, sprig, true heath, twig, vegetation, vine

Part of: genus Smilax, Smilax

Encyclopedia: Brier, Wa