[2868] Or wild vine.
[2869] The fruit is formed of three oblong capsules, containing a triangular seed of black brown colour, about the size of a kidney bean.
[2870] This is not the white vine or bryony, mentioned in c. 16 of this Book, but the Tamus communis of Linnæus.
[2871] The seeds, which are remarkably pungent and powerful in their effects, are only used, at the present day, in medicinal preparations for cattle.
[2872] This is still done at the present day; to which it is indebted for its French name l’herbe pediculaire, or louse-plant.
[2873] Pliny seems again to have fallen into the error of mistaking οὖλον, the “gums” for οὐλὴ, a “cicatrix;” the corresponding passage in Dioscorides, B. iv. c. 156, being “defluxions of the gums.”
[2874] They would be of no use whatever, Fée says, for such a purpose.
[2875] As tending to carry off “pituita,” or phlegm.
[2876] In B. xii. c. 61.
[2877] “Ampelos agria.” Fée observes, that this Chapter is full of errors, Pliny beginning by speaking of the wild vine, the variety Labrusca of the Vitis vinifera of Linnæus, and then proceeding to describe what is really the Bryonia dioica of modern botany, and applying its characteristics to the wild vine, or labrusca.