# Bryony (Bryonia dioica)

**Brionia**

**Known today as.** White bryony, *Bryonia dioica* (now *Bryonia cretica* subsp. *dioica*), whose large root was sold as a false mandrake.

Kind: Plant  
Poisoning: Gastrointestinal irritants (https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/poisons/gastrointestinal)  
Toxic: yes

> **Caution.** 

## What did Canale use it for?

Its root in the cockerel and the oil; dried and worn on the neck, “it hinders every hex, as Gordonius attests” (chs. 6, 9–10; note XLVIII).

## What does modern science say?

A violent purgative and poisonous; about fifteen berries are reported as lethal to a child and forty to an adult. The amulet use drew on its mandrake-like root.

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **cucurbitacin B**: 
- **bryonin**: 

**Mechanism.** The cucurbitacins are violent irritants of the gut.

**Dose.** Forty berries have killed a child; the root, mistaken for mandrake, purges to collapse.

**Standing.** No medicinal use.

## What lore surrounds it?

The “English mandrake”: its great forked root was carved into little men and sold as the true mandrake to the credulous (see [Mandrake](https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/mandrake)).

## What did the older authorities say?

**Pliny.** Calls it the white vine, ampeloleuce to the Greeks, with jointed climbing twigs, leaves jagged like the vine’s, and a root “large and white, and very like a radish at first”; it draws out splintered bones, disperses gatherings, works as an emmenagogue and diuretic, goes into an electuary for asthma, and taken thirty days together in doses of three oboli “has the effect of reducing the spleen”; bands of white vine were also tied round hives to keep bees from flight.

## Sources

- Pliny the Elder, *Natural History* 23.16, 21.48, trans. J. Bostock & H. T. Riley (1855), Perseus Digital Library.
- Nelson, L. S., et al. (2007). *Handbook of Poisonous and Injurious Plants*.

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*Bryony.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-01. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/bryony

Historical description, not medical advice.