White bryony
A poisonous climber of hedges and scrub; its greenish flowers give bees nectar and pollen from late spring to late summer.
- Nectar
- Medium
- Pollen
- Medium
- Flowering
- JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec
- Height
- 2-4 m
- Life cycle
- Perennial
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White bryony is a dioecious plant that resprouts every year from a thick, turnip-like root and climbs hedges and shrubs with its tendrils. Male and female plants are separate; the greenish-white, veined flowers of both secrete nectar, and male plants also offer pollen. Besides honey bees, it feeds a species of mining bee that depends on this plant alone.
Flowering
From May to September it keeps opening new flowers and provides forage for a long time.
Honey and pollen
There is no single-flower honey; it adds a little to hedge and woodland-edge honeys. No reliable record of the pollen load colour was found.
Note for the beekeeper
The root and the red berries are poisonous to people and animals; no poisoning linked to nectar or honey has been reported. Related Bryonia species in Turkey (B. multiflora, B. aspera) are visited by bees in the same way.