BLACK BRYONY 233 



The tops are cut and used as a pot-herb as spinach. This plant 

 was used in religious festivals, preventing disease for a year, so it was 

 thought. When salted it will curdle milk. The stems are fibrous as 

 well as the root, and have been used for hemp to make ropes and 

 paper. Whipping with nettles was practised for lethargy, rheumatic 

 pains, palsy. The Nettle is refused by cattle. 



ESSENTIAL SPECIFIC CHARACTERS: 



279. Urtica dioica, L. Stem erect, tall, leaves opposite, cordate, 

 serrate, plant dioecious, male flowers in lax panicles, female crowded, 

 seeds ovate. 



Black Bryony (Tamus communis, L.) 



The present distribution of Black Bryony is the North Temperate 

 Zone in Europe, south of Belgium, N. Africa, to Asia, and it is un- 

 known in ancient deposits. In Great Britain it is found throughout 

 the Peninsula, Channel, Thames, Anglia, and Severn provinces, but is 

 not found in Radnor in S. Wales, Montgomery or Merioneth in N. 

 Wales, occurring in the Trent, Mersey, H umber, Tyne, and Lakes 

 provinces generally, except in the Isle of Man, or from Belgium south- 

 wards, and in the Channel Islands. 



Black Bryony is common enough in England, growing usually in 

 hedges, either by the roadside or in fields, scarcely a hedge in some 

 districts being without it, while the White Bryony is far from general. 

 It is also to be found in moist woods. 



Black Bryony has the twining or climbing habit, the shoots re- 

 volving in two and a half to three hours. The rootstock is large, egg- 

 shaped, subterranean, black, and fleshy. The stems are very long, 

 slender, angular or round, branched. The leaves are undivided, egg- 

 shaped to heart-shaped, acute, with a long narrow point, obscurely 

 lobed laterally, long -stalked, glossy, 5-7 -nerved, net- veined as in 

 Dicotyledons, the lip bristle-like. The stipules are bent backwards. 



The flowers have a bell-shaped perianth, and are small, yellowish- 

 green, and regular, in axillary racemes on long stalks. The plant is 

 dioecious. The male flowers are solitary or grouped in slender racemes, 

 branched at the base, with 6 stamens inserted on the base of the 

 perianth -segments. The female flowers are in shorter racemes, bent 

 back, few-flowered, with a perianth adhering to the ovary, and short 

 functionless stamens. The bracts are very small. The limb of the 

 perianth is 5-partite. There is a single style. The berry is red, ob- 

 long, few-seeded, imperfectly 3-celled. 



