I haven’t really been paying much attention to a mini-group of black spine-free daturas growing next to the pea trellis, since they volunteered and seem to be doing very well without any help from me. I’ve just been enjoying the occasional bloom. Yesterday I was having a good look at the garden and noticed that this mini-group was not composed of just daturas. In fact, the tallest plant is actually a black nightshade that is covered with its small flowers. Now what’s weird is that I did not plant any black nightshade there, and it’s quite a distance from the area where I have planted them in the past (the shade plot). It’s a ragged looking plant with flea-beetle shot holes in the leaves, but it’s obviously happy, since it is taller than anything else there. This plant sure is calling my name this year. Why, I don’t know. Maybe it is the combination of food and spirit it offers/represents.
A few years ago I came across a really in-depth scientific article on Solanum nigrum. I downloaded it, but lost it in computer deaths and have not been able to find it again online. That article got me thinking about growing it for eating, which led to the idea of making wine from the berries.
I live just south of the big winery area in upstate NY. One of the perks the state offers wineries is that if they make wine out of NY produce, they get a massive tax break. I have had the fantasy in the past of creating a black nightshade winery here. Perhaps it is not so fantastical an idea after all.
I don’t know much about the folklore of this plant. In Europe, according to Samuel Thayer, it was avoided because of confusion with deadly nightshade. I’m wondering if some European witches might have used black nightshade instead of deadly nightshade but that the folks around them did not know the difference. I think I mentioned that Culpeper said if you can’t tell the difference between black nightshade and deadly nightshade, don’t use either.
I found a few drips and drabs of interesting info about this plant. One old folklore article mentioned that out west it was called bonewort. I’m thinking this is a corruption of banewort, which is one of its old names in England. I have a book about folk medicine of England and Ireland called Medicinal Plants in Folk Tradition. It seems really complete to me but doesn’t even list Solanum nigrum. Odd. It has plenty of medicinal uses outside of Europe.
So I am not hallucinating when I am seeing this plant growing everywhere all of a sudden?
Honest to pete, I only noticed yesterday that a planter in front a business I pass on my way to and from work is full of Solanum nigrum. The plants just jumped up overnight and are interspersed with these pinwheel petunias and snapdragons. Very odd, because I’ve never heard of people landscaping with this for its attractiveness.
It is growing wild along the bike paths I traverse, too. Darndest thing.
But back to your wine, huskberries and cape gooseberries and the vines from Peru that produce fruit all come to mind for your nightshades
What a cool idea!
No, you are not hallucinating! This plant is suddenly all over the place for me too. It’s unbelievable. Today I got out of the car at the post office and there was one growing out of a crack in the curb! My yard is taken over with them. Even in the front. It is just freaking strange. What in the world does it mean?
Ground cherry wine. Oh boy. That would taste really wonderful, I think, using the pina colada variety. WHY did I forget to grow that this year?
Which ground cherry cultivar tastes like pineapple? Maybe I can do a late crop of them because we’re warm into October over here.
I googled ground cherry and husk tomato and silently kicked myself because it looks like there’s a crapload of stuff I could have sown in the spring, never mind that I’m already juggling plates and pumpkins while balancing on a unicycle, with Lucy balanced on my head while she juggles tins of sardines.
I grew two varieties last year, Cossack and Aunt Molly’s. I lost all the tags, but the named varieties seem to all taste much better than the plain species. I probably still have seeds, if you’d like to try them. I think they are a good fruit. Old Man Sevin even liked them.