Black Nightshade

Solanaceae

LIFE FORM: Summer annual

NATIVITY: Eastern North America

VEGETATIVE CHARACTERISTICS:

This plant can grow to about 2 feet tall; dark-green, alternate leaves have irregular, blunt teeth on their margins.

FLOWERS:

Small, white flowers with yellow anthers produced in late summer.

FRUIT/DISPERSAL AGENTS:

Shiny, black fruits are less than half an inch in diameter; readily dispersed by birds and other animals.

ECOLOGICAL PREFERENCE:

Grows in a wide variety of disturbed habitats, but prefers sunny, moist soil; neglected residential and commercial landscapes; minimally maintained public parks and open space; vacant lots and rubble dump sites; woodlands that develop on abandoned open space; unmowed highway banks and median strips with frequent salt applications.

ENVIRONMENTAL FUNCTION:

Disturbance-adapted colonizer.

CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE:

The fruits of this European species are edible and can be used to make pies; there is a similar native American species, S. ptycanthum. Included by Greek physician Pedanius Dioscorides in his five volume herbal, De Materia Medica, which was written in the first century AD and remained in active use into the 1600s.