THE 



BRYONY. 



Bryonia dioica. Nat, Ord., Cueurbitaeeee. 



RYONY in popular parlance is a 

 . name bestowed equally on two very 

 distinct species the plant we have 

 here figured, and a second plant 

 which appears on another of our plates. 

 The only point in common is found 

 in the fact that both are hedge- 

 creepers ; in every other respect they 

 are completely unlike ; there is no 

 t botanical affinity, no outward sem- 



i blance. The present plant is some- 



times called the white bryony, so as to 

 make a more emphatic distinction between 

 it and the other plant referred to the black 

 bryony. The name is not, however, at all a 

 good one, for while the berries of the black 

 bryony are, from their deep purple-black, a suffi- 

 cient justification of its name, there is no especial pro- 

 priety in the name white bryony as applied to the present 

 species. Its ordinary name, that with which we head our 

 remarks, is in every way the most expressive. It is also 

 called wild vine, wood-vine, or hedge-vine by old writers, 

 and these names, all pointing to its resemblance to the 



