posted 3 months ago
I wanted to share some experiences with Black nightshade (Solanum ptychanthum), a native tomato relative that I love.
They are smaller than tomatoes, only getting around knee high at the greatest, and the berries are huckleberry sized. They are reliably self sowing (after all, they’re native!) and like to spread through compost that hasn’t been heated sufficiently to kill all the seeds. I haven’t had any success germinating them intentionally like tomato seeds, but they always pop up here and there.
The flavor of the black nightshade, I think, is better than that of tomatoes. Some may be surprised, having worked with a black nightshade relative such as garden huckleberry or wonderberry that are rumored to be tasteless. Black nightshade is like a small, black, sweet, highly flavorful tomato—like the best cherry tomatoes—but you can taste in their flavor something a little more reminiscent of potatoes. I attribute this earthier flavor to trace amounts of solanine rather than the brighter-flavored tomatine present in tomatoes.
In regards to “toxins”…. I do not worry about them. If a berry tasted bad (after the frost) I wouldn’t eat it. Alkaloids generally taste bitter or acrid, but a small amount of them is healthy for us and considered medicinal, and they give complexity of flavor to our foods. I believe all medicinal plant foods affect us subtly in ways that let us adapt to our environment and season, and the tiny amounts that give the plant flavor are not going to hurt us. It is like the question of tasteless cucumbers. Some time ago people ate cucumbers that had flavor, then they bred out all of the flavor. Now people are breeding flavorful cucumbers again. But this slight bitterness that gives the cucumbers flavor is likely cucurbitacin, a deadly toxin in large quantities!
In all fairness though, I eat nightshade berries whenever I can find them. They do get bitter after the frost so I don’t eat them at that point, but usually they are tasty and good. I consider eggplants more toxic-tasting than black nightshade and prefer the latter, but you’d have to eat a lot of either to get poisoned.
The more compost they get, clearly, the bigger, sweeter, and better the flavor. They are a good crop for people who can’t get tropical nightshades like eggplant, tomato, and pepper started properly, but would still like to have some nightshade fruit.
I have not tried this because they are not abundant enough (yet) here, and I like the berries too much, but in many countries the greens are an especially important source of food. They are boiled and then eaten as a nourishing staple green vegetable. Independent of humans they grow in river beaches and rich rocky ledges, but in association with humans and ruminants, they grow in pastures, gardens, middens, construction sites, and compost heaps.
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