Spring and fall are both good times to cut canes from Rosa multiflora to use for basketry. This is an aggressive, invasive rose species in my area, so I am always fighting it in our woods.
Multiflora rose has wicked, curved prickles that are great at grabbing onto things to help it climb up onto nearby trees and shrubs, but they curve in one direction. That means if you get caught by them, you can stop and back up to get un-stuck. I have noticed that some of the canes do not have prickles at all, and those are the easiest for me to process. However, I will not pass up a good cane just because it has prickles; they grow directly from the skin and can be snapped right off by pressing them sideways, leaving a clean oblong scar where the prickle had been.
I scraped the skin/bark off of these canes while sitting on my couch because it was mid-march and still quite chilly outside in the evenings. I cut these canes after coming home from work, and you need to scrape the bark while they are still relatively fresh. As a result of doing this inside, I had a lot of help from Franchise the fluffy criminal.
Being inside, I scraped the bark off over a large plastic tote. I use the back edge of my harvesting knife — the cutting edge is too sharp, but the back side is nice and square with corners that will cut into the bark but not go too far into the wood itself.
I removed the bark by scraping towards myself, with the narrower end of the cane farther away. I rotate the cane as I scrape so that I can get all sides. You can see the little ribbons of bark and wood that build up ahead of the scraped portion. They will fall into the tote as I work (instead of the floor).
After the cane is fully debarked, I bend it into whatever shape I want it to be and secure it so it stays. The cane will become hard and inflexible as it dries, and it will hold whatever shape it dries in.
As a note, you do not have to remove the bark to use these. I simply think it looks nicer and gives me the option to put a nice finish on the wood if I wish. Here is a cane I bent and dried without doing anything but cleaning off the exterior.
These canes have a spongy pith in the middle, so they are not good candidates for splitting. I use them whole to make rings that will eventually become basket rims or ribs. You could also make interesting shapes for decorative items, if you found the right cane for it. Just make sure to shape it before it dries and becomes rigid!
Smash the Shell 