Dioscorides’s bruonia melaina is Bryonia alba, not Tamus communis, and an Illustration labeled bruonia melaina in the Codex Vindobonensis is Humulus lupulus not Bryonia dioica

The Cucurbitaceae genus Bryonia contains ten species that are distributed throughout the Mediterranean to North Africa and from central Europe to Kazakhstan. References to the medicinal uses of species of Bryonia span two millennia, including two passages in Dioscorides’s De Materia Medica, written in about 65 CE. An illustrated copy of this text, known as the Codex Vindobonensis and dated 512 CE, is enriched with illustrations, including two labeled as bruōnia or bryonia. Here we argue that while Dioscorides’s text clearly concerns the blackfruited B. alba and a red-fruited species, perhaps B. cretica or B. dioica, only one of the plates in the Codex shows a species of Bryonia, while the other shows Humulus lupulus.Cucurbitaceae 2008. IX EUCARPIA Meeting. Avignon (France), May 21-24th, 200