White bryony
Britain's only native member of the cucumber family, a hedgerow climber with coiled tendrils and an enormous underground tuber, and the exclusive pollen source of the bryony bee. It is also seriously poisonous in every part, which makes it a plant to know accurately rather than to plant casually.
Caution
Every part of the plant is poisonous, and the red berries are attractive and dangerous to children. The tuber has a long history in folk medicine, sold as English mandrake, and that history is a record of poisonings rather than of cures. This is a plant to identify and leave rather than to grow deliberately in a family garden.
Value to bees
- Nectar
- Moderate
- Pollen
- High
- As a honey crop
- Not a honey source
- Which bees, and why
- Andrena florea, the bryony bee, collects pollen from white bryony and from nothing else, and is restricted in Britain to southern and eastern counties where the plant is common. Because the plant is dioecious, the bee must visit both sexes — pollen from the males and nectar from both.
- Worth knowing
- A long-running pollen source, and the entire basis of one specialist bee's existence.
Flowering
- In flower
- May to September (northern hemisphere)
Growing it
- Conditions
- Sun or part shade in hedgerow and scrub on light calcareous soil, climbing through whatever support is available.
- Size
- Climbing to 4 m through hedge and scrub, from a tuber that can reach the size of a football.
- Native range
- Europe and North Africa, in hedgerow, scrub and woodland edge, generally on lighter calcareous soils.
- Suits
- Hedgerow
- Best left where it occurs naturally in hedgerows rather than planted.
- Vigorous and capable of smothering a hedge if unchecked.
- Where it is present, its value to the bryony bee is a genuine reason not to clear it.
What it looks like
A vigorous climber with palmately lobed rough-hairy leaves and spiralling tendrils, carrying small greenish-white flowers with darker veining. Male and female flowers are on separate plants, and clusters of red berries follow on the female.
Sources
- Field Guide to the Bees of Great Britain and Ireland — Bloomsbury (2015) · Field guide
- HoneyHQ editorial synthesis — HEKNO Ltd · HoneyHQ synthesis
How sources are selected and weighted is set out in the sources and evidence policy.
Guides covering this plant
- Why flowering seasons matterBees and flowers have to be in the same place at the same time. That synchrony is being pulled apart by warming, and for specialist bees with narrow windows it is a serious problem.
- How to make a garden genuinely useful to beesMost bee-friendly advice covers flowers in June, which is the one thing bees are least short of. The gaps are at the ends of the year — and half the problem is not flowers at all.
Tools for planning planting
- Flowering calendar
What should I plant so that something is always in flower for bees?
- Bee-friendly garden planner
What should I plant in the space I actually have?
- Plant recommendation tool
Which plant fills this specific gap?