Bryonia.] cucuebitace/E. 181 



In woods, thickets, hedges and fences, sometimes in open pastures, in the inte- 

 rior of ihe island, never along the coast. Fl. May — September. Fr. July — 

 October. Tf.. 



E. Med. — Very local. On St. George's Down, above West Standen farm. 

 Near Pagham in several places. Arreton. Not uncommon on the (green ?) saud 

 about Perreton farm. Near Long-Down farm. Knighton and Ashey, [the late] 

 Lady Bienthii. Shanklin, Undercliff,C(>wes, Sheridan's Guide, but I ha> e never seen 

 it in any of these maritime localities, and suspect the Black Bryony (Tamus com- 

 munis) has been the plant intended, which frcim the similarity of its English name 

 is beinfr constantly confounded with this very different genus. 



W. Med. — Frequent in thickets, copses and busby places in the tract of downs 

 between Newport and Shorwell. Near Idlecombe, by the roadside. Plentiful 

 about Eoughborough farm. Marvel copse. Lane by Alvington. Hedges about 

 White Croft. Frequent about Calbonrne on the road to Shalfleet, and abundant 

 between Calliourne and Brixton, also about Westover. Frequent in woods at 

 Swainston. Rowledge. Garden-hedge at Redway. Woolverton, by Shorwell. 

 New Barn and at Gatcombe. Northcourt. A few plants at the eastern end of 

 Westover plantation. A pistillale plant or two in a wood near Afton House, the 

 only instance where I have seen the species within some miles of Yarmouth. On 

 the sand not far from Buck's Heath. At Chillerton, frequent. Foot of Mottistun 

 Down, on the S. side. 



Root very large, fusiform, either of one, or more commonly of two, often equal 

 and divaricate, slightly branched, fleshy tubers, bearing a grotesque resemblance 

 to the legs of a man, brownish or yellowish white externally, and uneven with 

 close parallel wrinkles ; within white, succulent and spongy, with the foetid odour 

 of the herbage, in taste highly bitter, acrid and nauseous. Stem one or more, 

 annual, alternately though not much branched excepting at its origin, scandent 

 but not twining, supporting itself for many feet in length on hedges and bushes 

 by long, simple, axillary tendrils, the direction of whose spiral is invariably 

 reversed at some one or more points of the helix ;* sometimes trailing, bluntly 

 5-angled, furrowed, scabrous with short bristly hairs, almost downy at its base. 

 Leaves oi a dull grayish, sometimes bright green, thinnish or membranaceous, 

 greatly exceeding their short, stout, rounded, very rough petioles, various in size ; 

 heart-shaped in circumscription, palmately 5-lobed, 5 — 7 ribbed at base ; lobes 

 various in breadth and depth, of the smaller and upper leaves often very deeply 

 cleft and narrow, of the larger and lower sometimes quite shallow, and bluntly 

 angular-dentate only ; in all more or less pointed or obtuse, of the uppermost 

 leaves acute or acuminate, tipped with a soft mucro, middle lobe longest, and as 

 well as the rest more or less obscurely subtrifid at the apex ; very rough or sca- 

 brous on both sides and on their margins with numberless short, erect or curved, 

 simple bristles with tubercular bases, longer and more copious on the under side 

 of the leaf, jointed internally. Staminule flowers in corymboso-subumbellate 

 clusters, of about 4 to 7 or 8 in each cluster, their common peduncle axillary, usu- 

 ally about as long as the leaves. Calyx greatly shorter than the corolla, its segments 

 small, triangirlar-lanceolate, acute and reflexed. Corolla greenish white. Fila- 

 ments 3, extremely short and thick, inserted on the short nectariferous tube of the 

 corolla, two of them bearing each a pair of anthers, the third a solitary anther and 

 closing the cavity below them ; anthers 5, anfracluose, thick, their margins waved 

 somewhat in the form of the letter N, and beautifully fringed on each side along 

 the line of dehiscence with a row of bristle-tipped pellucid globules ; pollen yel- 

 low, globular. Pistillate flowers much (about one-half) smaller than the stami- 

 nate, in fewer- (2-, 3-, or 5-) flowered, hence ecarcely umbellate clusters, that are 

 much shorter than the leaves, from the axils of which they spring. Calyx shortly 

 pedunculate on the globose ovary, deciduous, its segments narrower and subulate, 

 scarcely half the length of the corolla, spreading and recurved. Corolla with 

 narrower, less copiously reticulated segments, very hispid within at their base. 



* This interruption in the direction of the spiral I have remarked in the ten- 

 drils of Sicyos angulate ; docs it occur in those of other Cucurbitacece ? 



