16 CUCURBIT ACE ^ 



gathered by mistake, and its bitterness induced the men who procured it to 

 consider it deleterious, bitterness in a vegetable indicating, in the ideas of 

 the Hebrews, the presence of poison. Our Red-berried Bryony is the only 

 British genus contained in this order. 



Bryony (Brydnia). — Stamens three ; style 3-cleft ; fruit, a globose berry, 

 Name from the Greek bryo, to bud, from its rapid growth. 



Bryony (Bryonia). 



Red-berried Bryony (B. dioica). — Leaves palmate, rough on both sides ; 

 pistils and stamens on different plants. Plant perennial. A very pretty 

 climber is this Wild Bryony in early spring, when its half-developed leaves 

 are of a delicate green hue, and its unfolding shoots grey with long silvery 

 hairs. But as the months advance these leaves grow out into large vine-like 

 foliage, and become of a deep rich green hue, covered with thick prickly 

 hairs, and the long shoots armed with branching tendrils wind their way 

 along the bushes, occupying no small space in the green hedgerow : — 



"The scallop'd Bryony mingling round the bowers, 

 Whose fine bright leaves make up the want of flowers," 



The blossoms, which may be seen from May to September, add little to the 

 beauty of the plant, for though they are large, yet their greenish white petals, 

 marked with darker veins, have nothing very attractive in appearance, and 

 are also destitute of perfume, save such faint and sickly odour as might 

 suggest the idea that they belonged to a poisonous plant : nor would the 

 inference be altogether wrong. The root partakes of that powerful drug 

 yielded by the Colocynth, and the round red berries, which are in autumn 

 amongst our most beautiful wild fruits, are poisonous, while the whole plant 

 abounds with a fetid and acrid juice. The root is very large and succulent, 

 and to this accumulation of nutriment Linnaeus attributed the quick growth 

 of the Bryony. G-erarde mentions having seen one as large as a child six 

 months old, weighing half a hundredweight, but this was unusually large. 

 These roots were formerly much prized as a remedy for dropsy, but are not 

 now administered by medical men internally, though Professor Burnett 

 records that they were a few years since still sold at Covent Garden market, 

 and used by the pugnacious to remove the blackness " which follows blows 

 too vigorously applied in the neighbourhood of the eyes." The root, how- 

 ever should not be used even externally when in a fresh state, or it would 

 blister the skin. The acrimony is partly removed by drying. The writer just 

 alluded to says, " Bryony root has also been often used, when cut in slices, 

 to mix nth calumba-root, a vile adulteration, as the properties of the drugs 

 are most dissimilar." He adds, that the most serious consequences might 

 ensue from its use in cases in which a tonic like the calumba is required. The 

 fraud is considered by medical practitioners to have originated in the belief 

 which once prevailed, that calumba was the root of Bryonia epigcea, which it 

 is said to resemble, and which in India is used instead of it. Our old 

 herbalists praise the Bryony root as an invaluable external and internal 

 remedy, though, according to their own admission, it was " a furious martial 

 plant," Among other ways of using it, it was commonly made into ?n. 



