THE BLACK BRYONY. 151 



The roots of the black bryony are very large and fleshy ; 

 like most other things, they were, in the Middle Ages, ac- 

 credited with healing virtues. They were ordinarily applied 

 for rheumatism, but their irritant and acrid nature make 

 them dangerous things to experiment with. The stems are 

 very long, and twine amongst the branches of other plants. 

 The flowers are greenish, and in character dioecious i.e., 

 the stamens and pistil are in different flowers, the blossom 

 of each plant being all of them of either one or the other 

 form. The specimen represented in our illustration is a 

 male, or stamen-bearing plant. The flowers are somewhat 

 different in form, and the staminate blossoms are borne 

 on longer stalks than the pistillate. The six little bright 

 yellow dots in the centre of each of the flowers figured are 

 the anthers of the stamens, the parts that in this, as in 

 many other plants, are clear yellow in colour and covered 

 with a dust-like substance called pollen. The flower is 

 what is termed by botanists a perianth a term applied 

 when the outer ring that represents the calyx is very 

 similiar both in form and colour to the next series of parts. 

 In the buttercup, the corolla is bright yellow, the calyx 

 green, and there is no resemblance between the petals and 

 the sepals; but in many flowers, as in the lily, this 

 difference is not so distinctly marked, and the term 

 perianth is used to denote such a feature. In the flowers 

 of the black bryony it will be seen that the parts of the 

 corolla and calyx are quite alike in colour, and almost 

 similar in form. The berries that succeed the pistillate 

 blossoms are large, and of a deep crimson colour; the term 

 red-berried bryony, applied to the other species, is therefore 

 not in itself distinctive it, in fact, points to a feature of 

 resemblance, not one of difference; though, as the name 



