Yes, briars is a Scrabble word!

Noun

1. Eurasian rose with prickly stems and fragrant leaves and bright pink flowers followed by scarlet hips

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

3. Evergreen treelike Mediterranean shrub having fragrant white flowers in large terminal panicles and hard woody roots used to make tobacco pipes

4. A pipe made from the root (briarroot) of the tree heath