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These photos are from 23 July
White Byrony turned up in my garden a few years ago. It is very popular with bees of all sorts - the pictures show a honey bee (I think!) and a small insect which I think may be a bee because it looked to have pollen baskets (not showing in the photo) on its back upper legs.
It is a beautiful plant with lots of 'art nouveau' type tendrils, it flowers from June till the frosts when it dies back to ground level. It has pretty strings of red berries (but despite having about 6 plants within 100 square yards I disappointingly get very few of these) Presumably the birds can eat them - which would explain how they got here.
It is a bit thuggish in competition with other less vigorous 'garden plants - one quickly covered a 12ft by 4ft trellis meant for a rose, but there is one that grew up a an ivy covered stump and so between them provide a very long nectar and pollen season!
I would be interested to if anyone knows if its foliage provides 'fodder' for any insect life (i didn't notice any signs of being nibbled)
Hi Ratty
I had never seen this plant so looked it up to find out more, I have posted a link below, it is a member of the Cucumber family so you would assume it is edible but this is not the case it is actually poisonous, and it seems to be onlt insect life that eats it?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryonia
Shane
Regards Shane
My Photos in Flickr.
Thanks for the link, it was very interesting. I can well believe it was grown in the garden until the 18th century - it is very pretty.
The further link in the wikipedia article seems to show the wrong photos for White Byrony which it calls Byronia alba, and the text refers to it having black berries. The New Concise British Flora (1982 - so things may have changed) lists it as Byronia dioica, which wikipedia has as Red Byrony (native to S, Europe) but show the photos of our native White Byrony - all a bit confusing!