This is the final blog from my recent trip to East Sussex, a post about a new plant I found on my final day. I’d spent the day meandering around Cuckmere Haven and was reluctant for the holiday to end, so went for a short wander in Friston Forest behind the Seven Sisters Visitor Centre. At one point I came out into a clearing, where a lot of tree trunks were stacked and in the centre of the track between these stacks I noticed this plant and took some photos.

This is White bryony (Bryonia dioica), a plant which my Flora Britannica describes as ‘the only native British member of the gourd or cucumber family’, which makes sense when you see the tendrils curling around whatever the plant could find to support itself. That wonderful publication also provided the following snippets of information:

The whole plant is dangerously poisonous … most toxic part are the roots, which are white, succulent and often as much as six inches thick … cattle sometimes fatally attracted to them … In rural France, there was a popular belief that bryony root would stop or slow down milk production in humans … used to be frequent cases of poisoning amongst weaning mothers … one of the most attractive ornaments of hedgerows and wood margins in the south and east of England (bears string of green berries which turn a brilliant orange-red).…

It seemed odd to me that I hadn’t seen White bryony before but, when I checked the records in the Welsh biodiversity database, I noted that, although it was found in the greater Cardiff area prior to 2005, it has not been recorded since then. I don’t know whether that is a naturally occurring decline or whether humans have removed it because of its toxicity.