Black bryony's poisonous berries are the jewels of Halloween

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/oct/30/wenlock-edge-bryony-jewels-halloween

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A wind from the north swept all that murk into dark corners and shredded the tall trees: from buttercup yellow to chrysanthemum bronze, the ground is littered with beautifully decaying leaves. In the hedges, waiting for their moment, are the jewels of Halloween — the black bryony berries.

In spring, the stems of black bryony twitched like asparagus spears in the hedge and grew all summer into sprawling vines to dry like sisal after flowering; only the swags of their berries remain. From white, through orange to crimson, berries brighten with promise but are full of poison.

Underground, the bryony tubers are fist-sized, black on the outside, yellow inside: powerful, acrid and cathartic medicine that cures a bruise, a black eye maybe.

Underground, bryony has an older story that is all but forgotten.

Black bryony is a "womandrake", the female equivalent of mandrake, whose narcotic hallucinogen trips back through centuries to the shrieking root dug from under gallows. The root of mandragora takes human form, a manikin, a puppet for the earth-magic of old Europe. Because mandrake doesn't grow along English lanes, people here looked for alternative manikins to dig up and found the bryonies. White bryony, the only British member of the gourd or cucumber family, became a substitute mandrake. Black bryony, the only British yam, became womandrake. Both plants are poisonous.

Without taking a spade to the hedge to exhume her, I try to imagine the womandrake: a woody, yam-headed, root thing with the magical power to inhabit human form. Would I recognise her walking the lanes, waiting at the bus stop, queuing in the supermarket? Does she wear bright orange jewellery? I imagine her rooted to the earth but with a mind that travels the dark spaces of this landscape.