Perennial herbaceous vine with climbing and climbing stems, reaching 4 m in length, and oval-heart-shaped bare leaves. The flowers are inconspicuous, greenish, dioecious, dicotyledonous, collected in racemes, of which the male ones are many-flowered, on long stalks; female – few-flowered, on short legs. The fruit is a spherical single-celled red berry. The berries are poisonous. The rhizome is elongated, tuberous, quite powerfully developed, pinkish-brown on the outside, yellowish-white at the break.
Grows in forests and shrubs in the foothills and mountains. It occurs frequently, mainly in beech, beech-oak and hornbeam-ash-oak forests. Tamus is widely distributed both in the North Caucasus and Transcaucasia.
Medicinal raw materials are rhizomes, less often leaves, tops of young branches and seeds.
Tamus juice contains yet unexplored potent and corrosive substances. The roots contain formic and oxalic acids, glycosides, saponins, tannins, and other substances.
In folk medicine, the juice and decoction of the plant are used as a revulsive agent for lubricating diseased joints with rheumatism, arthritis, etc. When taken orally, it irritates the digestive canal, has a laxative effect, and in larger doses causes vomiting and diarrhea.