Root large and fleshy, blackish on the outside, white within. 
Stems smooth, twining about every thing in their way, and thus 
ascending without the aid of tendrils, to the height of 10 or 12 feet 
in hedges or among bushes, which they adorn with their graceful 
festoons of tawny, shining leaves, and bright red berries in the Au- 
tumn. Leaves alternate, on long petioles, smooth, bright green, 
shining, entire, the nerves raised beneath, varying from kidney to 
heart-shaped, heart-spear-shaped, triangular spear-shaped, and even 
halbert-shaped. Stipulas in pairs, awl-shaped. Flowers greenish, 
in imperfectly whorled, axillary, stalked racemes, with minute 
bracteas under their partial stalks ; the sterile and fertile flowers on 
separate plants. The sterile flowers soon fall off ; but the fertile 
ones are succeeded by oval smooth berries. 
The whole plant is smooth, and though considered poisonous, 
the young shoots are eaten in the spring, dressed like asparagus. 
The Moors are said to eat them boiled, with oil and salt. “ The 
roots are large, and replete with fecula, which is, however, mixed 
with a bitter acrid matter, that renders them unpleasant to the 
taste, and probably unwholesome. Heat and repeated washing 
will, however, destroy all the bitterness and acridity, and the fecula 
which remains forms a nutritious food. Attached to the roots are 
blackish tumours, which should be removed from those intended 
to be eaten ; for they are so exceedingly acrid, that, when beaten 
into a pultaceous mass with the rest of the root, they have been 
used as stimulating plasters.” Burnet's Outlines of Botany , p. 
440. 
Mr. Winch observes, in his “ Essay on the Geographical Dis- 
tribution of Plants,” that Tamus Communis terminates its long range 
on the north bank of the river Wear, above Sunderland, from as far 
south as Algiers. 
The Natural Order Dioscoree:, of which Tamus is the only 
British example, consists of monocotyledonous, twining plants or 
shrubs, the veins of whose leaves are reticulated, or palmatinerved. 
Their flowers are dioecious, small, and greenish. Their perianthium 
is superior and 6-parted ; and their stamens, 6 in number, are in- 
serted into the base of the perianthium. The ovary is 3-celled, 
with 1 or 2 seeds in each cell ; the style is deeply 3-parted ; and the 
stigmas undivided. The fruit is either succulent or dry ; and the 
embryo, which is near the hilum, is small, and included in a large 
cavity of cartilaginous albumen. 
The most important exotic Genera in this order are the Diosc6rea, 
or Yam; and Testudinaria, or Hottentot's Bread. The roots of 
these plants yield valuable articles of food in tropical countries. 
