Bryonia

Bryonia is a genus of flowering plants in the gourd family. Bryony /ˈbraɪ.əni/ is its best-known common name. They are native to western Eurasia and adjacent regions, such as North Africa, the Canary Islands and South Asia.

Male flower of white bryony (B. alba)
"Bryony" redirects here. For black bryony, see Dioscorea communis. For the feminine given name, see Bryony (given name).
For the Royal Navy ships,, see HMS Bryony.

Bryonia
Red bryony (B. dioica)
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Plantae
Clade: Tracheophytes
Clade: Angiosperms
Clade: Eudicots
Clade: Rosids
Order: Cucurbitales
Family: Cucurbitaceae
Subfamily: Cucurbitoideae
Tribe: Bryonieae
Genus: Bryonia
L.
Diversity
12 species

Description and ecology

Bryonies are perennial, tendril-climbing, diclinous or dioecious herbs with palmately lobed leaves and flowers in axillary clusters. The fruit is a smooth, globular berry.

Bryonia is used as a food plant by the larvae of some Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths), including the tortrix moth Phtheochroa rugosana (recorded on red bryony, B. dioica) and the cabbage moth (Mamestra brassicae).

Use by humans

Bryonies are occasionally grown in gardens, sometimes accidentally, sometimes deliberately so. Some species find use in herbal medicine. Generally however, these plants are poisonous, some highly so, and may be fatal if ingested. Cucurbitacin glycosides are primarily responsible for the plants' bitterness and emetic effects.

Variants of the plants' name, such as Briony, Bryonie and Bryony, are used in some cultures as female given names. They were quite popular in the 18th century.

The Royal Navy of the United Kingdom named two ships HMS Bryony after the plant.

Species
The toxic berries of red bryony (B. dioica)

Twelve species are presently accepted by the USDA:[1] Ten of these are supported in a molecular-phylogenetic analysis:[2] The only English species, B. dioica (white bryony), grows in hedgerows as far north as Yorkshire.

  • Bryonia acuta Desf. (formerly sometimes included in B. cretica)
  • Bryonia alba L. – white bryony
  • Bryonia aspera Steven ex Ledeb.
  • Bryonia cretica L. – Cretan bryony
  • Bryonia dioica Jacq. – white or red bryony (formerly sometimes included in B. cretica)
  • Bryonia lappifolia Vassilcz.
  • Bryonia marmorata E.M.A.Petit
  • Bryonia melanocarpa Nabiev
  • Bryonia monoica Aitch. & Hemsl.
  • Bryonia multiflora Boiss. & Heldr.
  • Bryonia syriaca Boiss.
  • Bryonia verrucosa Aiton
A bryony root (broken at the bottom)

Formerly placed here
gollark: You should get someone to code-review it, though.
gollark: ```Instead of the programs I had hoped for, there came only a shuddering blackness and ineffable loneliness; and I saw at last a fearful truth which no one had ever dared to breathe before — the unwhisperable secret of secrets — The fact that this language of stone and stridor is not a sentient perpetuation of Rust as London is of Old London and Paris of Old Paris, but that it is in fact quite unsafe, its sprawling body imperfectly embalmed and infested with queer animate things which have nothing to do with it as it was in compilation.```
gollark: https://doc.rust-lang.org/nomicon/index.html
gollark: Do not embark on the madness of unsafe Rust. Not even the Rustonomicon can save you fully.
gollark: Use `Mutex` in the standard library.

See also
  • Bryonopsis (meaning "looks like bryony"), a now-invalid genus currently assigned to close (Diplocyclos) and somewhat more distant (Kedrostis) relatives of Bryonia

Footnotes
  1. USDA (2009)
  2. Volz and Renner (2009)

References
  • United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) (2009): Germplasm Resources Information Network – Bryonia. Version of 2009-MAY-15. Retrieved 2010-APR-15.
  • Volz, S. M., and S. S. Renner (Volz and Renner) 2009. Phylogeography of the ancient Eurasian medicinal plant genus Bryonia (Cucurbitaceae) inferred from nuclear and chloroplast sequences. Taxon 58(2): 550-560.
  • Renner S. S., Scarborough J., Schaefer H., Paris H.S., and J. Janick. (Renner et al. (2008) Dioscorides's Bruonia melaina is Bryonia alba, not Tamus communis, and an illustration labeled Bruonia melaina in the Codex Vindobonensis is Humulus lupulus not Bryonia dioica. pp. 273–280. In: Pitrat, M., ed., Cucurbitaceae 2008, https://w3.avignon.inra.fr/dspace/handle/2174/218
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