THE WHITE BRYONY— continued. 
mechanical necessity when a change in length occurs in a flexible structure fixed at 
both its ends. 
The leaves of most Cucurbitacece are, like those of the White Bryony, scattered, 
exstipulate, palmately lobed, and rough, this roughness being probably the origin of 
the Norfolk name, Cow’s lick, for this species, just as the dense covering of the 
whole plant with white hairs, especially in its younger condition, gives its name 
the prefix White. 
The stamens throughout the Family are typically five ; but they are variously 
united, both in their filaments, which are often so joined as to appear as three, and 
in their anthers, which in Bryonia and many other genera are twisted together into an 
S-like curve. The soft berry of Bryonia is exceptional in not having the horny 
exterior typical of the gourd or pepo. 
The genus Bryonia derives its name, which was employed by Dioscorides, from 
the Greek fipvco, bruo, 1 sprout, with reference to its rapid growth ; and it shares the 
translated form of this name with the equally quick-growing but otherwise unrelated 
Monocotyledonous Black Bryony ( Tamus communis Linne). This latter species, 
climbing by twining, with glabrous polished shoots, may often be seen, clambering 
through a quickset hedge in early spring, side by side with Bryonia. 
White Bryony has a large, turnip-like root-stock, yellowish, transversely 
wrinkled, and often forked, which, we are told by old-time writers, 
“ sometimes groweth to the bignesse of a childe of a yeere old, so that it hath been by some cut into the forme of a man, and 
called a mandrake.*’ 
This root has a nauseous, acrid, milky juice containing a dangerously cathartic bitter 
principle similar to 'that of the allied Colocynth ( Citrullus Colocynthis Schrader), the 
poisonous Wild Cucumber of Gilgal mentioned in the Second Book of Kings. 
The green-veined cream-coloured flowers are not conspicuous to our eyes ; but 
they secrete honey at the base of the perianth and are freely visited by short-tongued 
bees, especially Andrena florea Fabricius. As both plant and bee seldom occur in 
Scotland or in Wales, it has been suggested that the distribution of the one is 
dependent on that of the other ; and also that the flowers emit some special odour, 
or ultra-violet rays of light, perceptible to the senses of the insect, though not to 
ours. This latter suggestion is supported by Knuth’s observation that the flowers 
have a powerful actinic effect upon photographic plates. 
The globular scarlet berries contrasting with the yellow autumn leaves are 
readily distinguishable from the larger and more elliptical fruit amid the bronze- 
purple foliage of the Black Bryony. 
