Poisonous Autumn Spring Summer
A poisonous plant that is a purgative and will give you terrible diarrhoea. The root used to be sold to unfortunate victims as mandrake root with unpleasant results. It has male and female flowers on the same plant although the flowers are very similar.
|Common Names||White Bryony, English Mandrake.|
|Scientific Name||Bryonia dioica|
Please note that each and every hedgerow item you come across may vary in appearance to these photos.
Almost anywhere as they spread mainly from seed dispersal by birds but do require a fence or another plant to grow up as they are a fast spreading climber.
Was used as a laxative in the past but the results were so explosive it is not considered safe for this use anymore.
I can catch the bus to MK. I live in Oxfordshire. I assume you don’t come this way?
If I can get there I’d be interested.
White bryony is poisonous? Here in Slovenia, my adopted home, we eat a lot of it at this time of year (April, May). The young shoots are used as a substitute for wild asparagus, or as a filler. It is plentiful in the woods here, where is it called ‘belushch’ in dialect. When my mum came over from Somerset she identified it as white bryony and said “That’s poisonous!” My wife has been eating it all her life with no ill effect, although I wouldn’t touch older plants with red berries.
We can not recommend eating White Briony but stories about these things are always interesting.
It is the same here in Turkey. We go along the hedgerows on the farm track I live on and pick it but at only certain times of the yr.
I old man he picks it to sell it.
But you have to know what you are picking. I was like your mother because I said exactly the same as I used to dig it out of peoples gardens in the uk as they had animals or children.