This is widespread across southeastern states, but largely restricted to acid soils. Colls. mapped as open dots are not assigned to variety. Leaves of glauca are strongly whitened and usually covered with short "hairs" below (or granular protruberances), often mottled with pale patches above, and entire margined. Compared to other greenbriers of Ky., S. glauca ("catbrier") has stems that are relatively slender (ca. 2-3 mm wide at base versus 3-5 mm), terete or slightly ridged, often glaucous when young and tend to blacken with age. Prickles are dense along lower internodes with varied sizes, but tend to be just stout, recurved and restricted to nodes in distal parts of plants. Rhizomes can become relatively large (tuberous) and deep.