Can you eat nightshade berries

HI Janice, thanks so much for your lovely feedback!! I greatly appreciate it. Yes it is a very common misconception that this plant is poisonous, but it is a healing plant for the earth and for us. Very cool! Yes when I was a child growing up in a wholly Maori community on the East Coast, North of Gisborne, we always ate the purple berries. We called them Poroporo.

Also a while ago I heard Maori women used the plant as a contraceptive, and scientists were looking to make a contraceptive using the plants properties. HI Win, Makes sense to eat the berries since they grow themselves and are tasty and nutritious as well. Interesting to hear the scientists where looking at using nightshade as a contraceptive.

Our southern poroporo, S. Is this typical or is it another plant? I live in Lancaster PA. We found what we believe to be the edible fruit S. They are growing with our tomatoes plants. When I first observed them I squished one and smelled it….. I was surprised that it smelled like a tomato and went online to find out what it is. I have found mixed reports on it be edible and being toxic. My friend planted wildflower seed from a reputable supplier and up sprouted a huge patch of what looks to be this plant.

Could the supplier have possibly sent Deadly Nightshade seeds by mistake? Not likely, I know, but how else to explain it? Thanks for the great website! Some years back I purchased some Solanum melanocerasum Garden Huckleberry seeds from rareseeds. I had several Huckleberry plants sprout.

They produced berries and we enjoyed them. Then some months later some more plants sprouted in the same location as where I had grown the Huckleberries. They looked like the Huckleberries we grew before.

We ate from those plants too. So, for several years now Huckleberries keep popping up in my yard and garden. Recently I discovered this article on S.

Now I am wondering if the berries we have been eating are from the Huckleberries I grew some years ago that keep coming back or S. Is there are way to tell the difference? And now that I have read this article I have noticed what looks like S. Yet another example of common names being confusing.

What do the ripe berries look like on the inside? Pretty much a juicy mass of tiny seeds. Only 4 or 5 of the berries on the total plant have turned black now, though, so it could be that they are not as ripe as they will get?

When the outside is black and shiny the inside is seedy and light green they should be mild to sweet. However, when I squish them the technical term the flesh, while purple and seedy, squishes clear juice, not purple, so I cannot imagine dying cloth with it as one of the other posts suggest and the black totally black berries are very sour, not bitter really, just not anything anyone would want to eat intentionally.

In your video, you said if it tasted bad to leave it alone — so I did — but if it is not the S. Thanks for helping me identify the plants growing on my patio. I have spent a good bit of time trying to research this on-line, including downloading several Apps for my phone which kept identifying the leaves as various Maples. It seems like this has solved it. They are somewhat sensitive to the heat on my patio, with the leaves wilting until I water them in the afternoon.

Again, thanks for the photos and descriptions. These are not really a bush, since bushes, aka shrubs, have woody stems. Some maples are very small trees or shrubs that tend to have a bushy form with many small trunks. That may be why your application for identifying plants did not understand what you meant. My family eat the leave all the time. We call it Morel. Old timers and 0ld deer hunters pointed out this plant to me. Deers will find this plant and eat the leaves ,one of their favorate food in South Louisiana.

We love this as a green that taste like no other. It is usually boiled, them cooked down in oil with pig fat or salted meat. Served over hot rice and sometimes eaten with hands, no utensils.

We find these plants in the woods of Plaquemines Parish and the whole family gets together to enjoy. It actually is similar in size the bush that has the nigrum berries. The main differences I can tell are the purple flowers, red berries, bug holes in the leaves, and woodier stalk.

I think deadly nightshade has purple flowers and nigrum has white. I would be wary of any similar looking vine with purple flowers. The young tender greens are edidble when cooked. I highly recommend not to eat the black fruit or any old leaves. As the leaves are bitter and so are the fruits. In my culture we all know not to consume these part of the plant. The fruits are used as seeds or a dye. I used to play around with the black seed pods when I was little and it would stain my hands and clothes.

I even remeber my grandmother using the stain as a dye for a cloth. Seeds production is extremely high due to low germination rate. I suspect they also require a cooling period before germination in the spring when conditions are right. My neighbor grew up in Laos and ate the leaves raw in salads and cooked in soups. A few minutes ago I ate a black shiny berry with no immediate ill affects. Tasted just like a tomato. From the description, I believe I have S. Generally said no… there is one report of its juice being used to curdle milk.

That juice also breaks down proteins. I would leave it alone. I come from Kenya and this plant is a delicacy for us. We prepare it as stew to eat with our staple food called ugali. Interesting page.. I live on the Gold Coast in Australia and this plant grows everywhere here as a weed. They just pop up in my garden, on the roadsides..

They remind me a bit of the elderberries I used to pick as a kid in the UK. I have been eating the ripe berries for a while now. Just in case.

Rockport Texas. Thanks Again. I live in South Florida, and I came across your site trying to identify what turned out to be S. Americanum growing in my yard. Not delicious, but kind of like a mix between a blackberry and a tomato. I am Southeast Asian and this has been one of our favorite vegetables.

As a child growing up my parents always had many types of vegetable seeds that they say are from back home. They tell me the names of them in my native language but I could never find out what they are called here. As a Eagle Scout one thing that we had been told. Is that anything black or blue is good for you, anything red some of the time , anything white never do you eat. As far as green berries go have no idea. It would be a good idea to find someone who knows your native plants.

Then you were taught wrongly. I can think of several blue or black berries that can make you quite sick or kill you. There are no short cuts.

We have to learn each plant. That said, Like the leaves, they are not toxic when cooked. Chris, I am of south Indian origin too and I eat the leaves, prepared green fruit and raw ripe fruit too. It is called Ganeke Hannu in Kannada. The green fruit is prepared by soaking it in buttermilk, salt and powdered fenugreek seeds and then dried in the sun.

This is later fried in oil and eaten with hot rice and oil. And oh, the fruit are sometimes red in Delhi.

Today, I was determined to find some internet information on the Tamil malathangalikkai which I find growing in many places in the US. I recognized the plant, but wished I could have confirmation on its edibility. My mother decided she knew what she was looking at. She started harvesting the green berries and using them the way we Tamils South Indians do back home in Tamilnadu in South India. She excitedly talks about her American find to her family in India.

At this point, I needed to know what the green berry was called in the western world. Using English spelling, I typed in the Tamil word into the Google search bar. I have succeeded most times in finding the information I am looking for about plants. This time, I did not. Now, I had names.

Then, I typed in the names to find articles on this plant. So glad to have found this site. And, so glad to have found two South Indian responses to the article.

We Tamils believe in the therapeutic qualities of the berries. We use them in specific gravies not throw them into any gravy. We also sun-dry them after marinating them in salted buttermilk water added to yogurt and churned with a hand-held wooden churner into a smooth liquid. We store the sun-dried berries to be used in a gravy or sauteed in ghee and mixed with cooked white rice. This product is so prized that Tamils returning to the US from a visit to Tamilnadu invariably come back with packets of this sun-dried product.

Now, we get this product in the Indian stores. Thank-you for your scientific information, Mr. Hope you find the cultural information interesting. They grow as a weed. I believed the green berries and leaves were poisonous but no the black berries.

I now live in Australia Sydney and have these grow as a weed in my backyard. And I still pop a few in my mouth straigh off the plant. Yesterday Mum was in shock so I promised to look it up.

I love them cooked with sugar as a dessert sweet, whether on ice cream or highlighted by whatever baked goods I can dream up. Savory preparations are fun too, from salads to my latest favorite—cooked with peppers, onions, and pork into a green purple chili, to be spooned over tamales, enchiladas, or breakfast burritos. I swear, I need to spend more time in the prairie! I had no idea some varieties of nightshade had edible berries! I live in Denver had some take up residence in my yard recently, but the berries were red.

Can you tell me what pond, and what town? Maybe when I go to visit my parents I can look there. This is an awesome post. We have some black berried plants and a red berried plants in our yard that I always thought to be a type of nightshade, but I have not looked at them extremely close. This year I definitely want to at least start getting more comfortable identifying these.

Hi Raiven, do you want to send me a picture? Photographic Location: On the grounds of the webmaster's apartment complex in Urbana, Illinois. Comments: The berries of Black Nightshade Solanum ptycanthum are probably edible to humans, if they are fully ripe and eaten in small quantities.

Green berries contain the toxic alkaloid, solanum, like the foliage. There are several Solanum spp. They fall into two groups: Those species with sharp bristles or spines, and those species without sharp bristles or spines. Black Nightshade falls into the latter group. In Illinois, the Solanum spp. Some Solanum spp. The berries of Black Nightshade are slightly smaller in size and more shiny than those of Deadly Nightshade Solanum nigrum , and its seeds are slightly smaller in size than those of the latter.

Black Nightshade produces true umbels of flowers all pedicels originating from the same location , while Deadly Nightshade produces pseudo-umbels of flowers the pedicels originating from slightly different locations.