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Post by hortusbrambonii on Mar 8, 2013 17:19:58 GMT -5
Is there anyone who can tell me more about those edible nighshade-berry things that are called names like American garden huckleberry and wonderberry and stuff. We don't usually have them in this part of the world. Are they any good? Do they taste like anything? (How do you know you're not eating black nightshade?)
I have a few seeds from 2 types called 'Solanum melanocerasum' and 'S. X burbankii' (the seeds look quite different), anyone who knows more about those?
And anyone who knows more about S. villosum?
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Mar 8, 2013 17:39:01 GMT -5
I grew "Garden Huckleberry" two growing seasons ago. I consider it inedible as a whole fruit whether cooked or raw. It was semi-palatable as a puree added as coloring to a lemon pie with lots of sugar. It did not become weedy in my garden. My seeds came generically, from a big-box seed retailer, without a species or cultivar designation, so it's possible that it wasn't one of the refined lines. Taste? Hmmm. Find a copper coin and suck on it. That'll be a good first approximation of the taste.
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Post by 12540dumont on Mar 8, 2013 18:44:32 GMT -5
Write to Oxbow, he's got an heirloom one.
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Mar 8, 2013 19:20:45 GMT -5
The Wonderberry / Sunberry plant showed up mysteriously in my garden two seasons ago. I believe the mice brought them into my corn plot / weed jungle. They are certainly an interesting plant. Worth experimenting with. The flavor isn't great, but edible if harvested only when they are deep purple. But like joseph "hints at" they have an odd slightly metalic aftertaste. Not enough to bother me, but then again I've only eaten one two berries at a time. I've never tried to make a pie with them. Three plants came up again in the same spot last summer. I am trying to let them naturalize. They could provide a nice food source for beneficial birds. And i think there is potential for some breeding work maybe. If nothing else they make excellent house plants. In fact i have one growing indoors right now. They can tolerate partial shade quite well, so they do okay inside. ...certainly MUCH more edible than cilantro, which i consider to be poisonous, and think should be wiped off the face of the earth. But that's just me.
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Post by oxbowfarm on Mar 8, 2013 20:44:13 GMT -5
I grow a version of these called Schwartzbeeren "black berry" which is an heirloom edible nightshade brought to N. America by Volgadeutsche immigrants. Whether it came from Germany and moved with them to Russia or if they picked it up after settling the Volga I don't know.
I like it very much, I find it perfectly edible and quite tasty. The flavor to me is almost identical to Physalis ground cherries, sort of like fried bananas to my taste buds.
I must say it is a PITA to pick, the berries are very small and the plants are kind of low and floppy. My grandmother (full blood Volgadeutsche) wouldn't grow them as she had despised picking them as a girl, but my great-grandmother probably made her pick tons of them because she had to make pie or maldasha for every meal. Supposedly they are still a very common weed in Greeley CO in the old Volgadeutsche neighborhoods.
I got mine from Jim (traab) who collects a lot of Volgadeutsche heirlooms. He said he had compared them to other edible nightshades, Wonderberry, Garden Huckleberry, etc and Schwartzbeeren was vastly superior, but I haven't grown the others so I can't say.
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Post by steev on Mar 8, 2013 23:32:46 GMT -5
Can't trust those Germans from Russia, too closely related to me; though what would Saskatchewan, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Kansas have been without them? Woefully deficient of soddies, I think. Winter wheat? Blame it on them.
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Post by hortusbrambonii on Mar 9, 2013 1:14:22 GMT -5
So some forms are quite unedible even when cooked? Makes me wonder why people would grow something that can be confused with a very poisonous plant and that does not taste great at all... But then again some S. nigrum varieties or related plants in the S. nigrum complex are said to be eaten as spinach in some parts India and Africa. Eating nightshade-leaves does not sound like a good idea to me... Does anyone know if the species in the S. nigrum complex are inbreeders or outbreeders and if they crossbreed with each other? Is there danger that if my neigbor has weedy S. nigrum in his garden that seed that I take from one of those huckelberry/wonderberry things might contain a poisonous hybrid next year? That 'schwartzbeeren' (looks like german for 'black berry indeed) variety sounds interesting though. No-one knows about S. villosum? Like this one: www.plant-world-seeds.com/store/view_seed_item/2416?actionName=view_berries&itemname=GOLDEN+PEARLS
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Post by blueadzuki on Mar 9, 2013 7:11:11 GMT -5
According to what I have read S.nigrum and S. Villosum were the two plants Luther Burbank crossed to get S. x burbankii. Incidentally, this months issue of Heirloom Gardening had a brief articule (or actulally sub article) about finding and unusually sweet tasting orange fruited S. nigrum growing wild somewhere in Rome, and the authors did mention they had saved seeds. Whether those seeds will eventually make it into the public seed pool I do not know, but those who watch SSE listings should probably keep thier eyes out. I also understand there is a red fruited version found in parts of India that is used in Ayurvedic medicine that is considered superior. One other edible nightshade I have some experiance growing is greenberry nightshade, S. opacum. This plant produces tiny (BB pellet sized) green fruits that taste sort of tomatoey. While not unpleasant, I'm not sure this is a plant I would reccomend for a few reasons. one is that given how tiny the fruit is (and the plants are small and not notably bountiful) the amount you have to pick to make even a mouthful is prohibitive. More importanty S. opacum looks almost IDENTICAL to the common weed S. americanum, identical enough that confusion is almost inevitable(opacum main deifferences is having marginally less dentate leaves and of course fruit that stays green when ripe) and potentially dangerous mixups are likey (while ripe S. americanum fruit is also supposedly edible, unripe fruit is poisionous (same as most nightsahdes) and that is what you will mix up with the greenberries. So if you live anywhere where americanum is a common weed that shows up in your gardens (and by now, that's probably most of the planet, it's that common a weed) and can potentially show up in your solanum patch, it's not really a great idea.
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Post by hortusbrambonii on Mar 9, 2013 7:56:20 GMT -5
I suppose that when a plant is sold for the edible fruits that the fruits are edible, so I guess the 'golden pearl' variety of S. villosum from plant-world-seeds.com would be safe to eat, not? On the other hand, both non-recommended uses of the leaves (eating them as spinach or smoking them like cannabis) do not seem to be compatible, so at least that's a bit fishy... On the other hand there seem to be plenty of S. nigrum-like plants on the planet that are grown for either their berries or leaves, so an edible one is not so surprising...
So that red-berried Indian type of nightshade should be edible and tasty?
A green-fruited nightshade would be the last thing in the world I would ever trust to eat though... Unripe nightshade berries of all types (inclusing tomatoes) are quite poisonous, and how does one ever know if they are ripe if the fruits are ripe.
I don't think we have S. americanum in Belgium, but I always supposed our native S. nigrum, which is not a rare plant at all to be poisonous. And I'm not going to try if I was wrong with that...
(How people are able to not see the difference between S. nigrum and Atropa belladonna is another thing, for me they are completely different plants, just as my Jaltomatoes are not likely to be confused with either one, so maybe growing the different edible varieties and getting familiar with them makes it easy to see the difference between all those more or less edible garden huckleberry, sunberry, wonderberry and the native weedy ones...)
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Post by hortusbrambonii on Mar 9, 2013 10:29:13 GMT -5
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Post by blueadzuki on Mar 9, 2013 19:25:11 GMT -5
Based on that, maybe it isn S.americanum I am thinking of as the plant confused with S. opacum, since I can tell S. nigrum from what I am thinking of pretty easily (S.nigrum is tallish and bears slighly flattened, matte berries in small clusters. The one I am thinking of is much smaller, and bears spherical shiny berries in pairs or singly. Maybe it's sticky nightshade.)
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Post by atash on Mar 9, 2013 23:58:01 GMT -5
I don't know if they occur in Belgium, but it is actually a native European plant, Solanum nigrum.
Most of what you have probably heard about them is terribly confused misinformation. Stephen Barstow set me straight on them directing me to an article that clarified the situation.
Apparently until around the 19th century, they were often confused with Atropa belladonna, aka "Deadly Nightshade", because they both have black berries. Around that time, when the plants were more clearly distinguished in the minds of toxicologists, reports of poisoning from S. nigrum stopped occurring.
Enter Luther Burbank. Somehow he convinced himself that he had hybridized two species with incompatible chromosome counts, and then his detractors claimed that he was endangering lives by releasing S. nigrum, which retained at least some of its false reputation for being toxic.
He was working with a number of species and might have simply made a mistake. In any case, what currently goes around as "Solanum x burbankii" is in fact plain old Solanum nigrum. It goes under several other names as well, such as "garden huckleberry", "Wonderberry", and "Sunberry" (strange name for a fruit that is almost jet black...you known, black like the sun...that was Luther Burbank's name for them).
"Chichiquelite" berries seem to be related but distinct, and I would not be surprised if they were tropical or subtropical in origin, and perhaps from the New World.
Usually S. nigrum's berries are a tad bland, but reputedly the coveted strains grown by Volgadeutscher--the ones Oxbowfarm is talking about--have a better flavor. In some parts of the world they settled, you still find pastries full of Schwartzbeeren.
Some of their highly-assimilated descendants are confused about what they remember eating in their Oma's home; they often confuse them with Black Currents (Grosselles noires). You might find references to them under the wrong name.
They are easy to grow. They tolerate cooler weather than tomatoes do, and are far more disease-resistant. I have been known to use them as "mock blueberries" to make mock blueberry muffins. My offspring are deeply suspicious of my blueberry muffins. They're not as flavorful as good blueberries, but they're easier to grow and it's easy to grow loads of them.
You might like to try Jaltomatoes as well. Those are from Mexico south through tropical South America. Also easy to grow.
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Post by hortusbrambonii on Mar 10, 2013 8:05:20 GMT -5
Thanks, I was already hoping from some 'Wagnering' input...
Seems like it's all quite complicated and I don't know if I will end up with anything tasty...
S. americanum has been found only one time here in Belgium (in 2009) if I can trust the observation database of waarnemingen.be, so it's not at all that common... But S. nigrum is indeed native here and quite common (mostly ssp.nigrum, and more scarcely ssp. schultesii) and said to be toxic. Maybe due to confusion with Atropa (do those even look the same?) but I also read that solanin as a chemical substance was first extracted from the ripe berries of S. nigrum. So I would think at least that strain of S. nigrum would be poisonous, not?
Btw, I think I can vaguely remember that I once read that in potatoes the presence of solanin can be tasted if you know how. Would such a thing be possible with nightshade berries too?
so you say that the S (x) burbankii is just a form of good old S. nigrum instead of the interspecies cross Mr. Burbank claimed it was? The sources I read said it to bea synonym of S. retroflexum, which should be another close-related species in the S. nigrum complex. The other one I have some seeds of (S. melanocerasum) is also said to be S. nigrum guineense or S. nigrum melanocerasum. (and sometimes S. scabrum) I don't know what the scientific name of the Chichiquelite is supposed to be but I suppose that like the 'Schwartzbeeren' it would again be a form of S. nigrum.
Most sources are not very enthusiastic about the taste of S. melanocerasum, and slightly less negative about the burbankii, although no one seems to really see it as a real 'wonderberry'. Some forms are said to be tasty and sweet though, like those 'Schwartzbeeren' and the chichiqelites.
It seems they would be the most interesting ones to grow tastewise? Anyone who has seeds from those? (Or from the red-seeded I don't know what will come out of my seeds, but I hope at least one of the 2 has some kind of usefullness...
I also read contradicting things about how sun and draught on one hand or forst on the other hand would improve the taste of the berry...
So, no-one who knows more about the S. villosum? Or where to get that red-fruited edible Indian 'Red Makoi' variety that should be edible according to wikipedia?
I had Jaltomato last year. Still don't know how to describe the taste, but it was more or less okay, not that spectacular thoug. We made a very good apple-jaltomato berry crumble pie with it... If anyone wants seed, I still have some to share...
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Post by ottawagardener on Mar 17, 2013 8:04:13 GMT -5
To go back to taste, we grow something called Sunberry which I originally got from Mapple Farms. It's supposed to be the Burbank one. It tastes quite good in small quantities out of hand or in a salad. I haven't tried backing with it.
As for S. nigrum, that volunteers as a weed. I haven't tried it though it pretty much looks identical so maybe I have...
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Post by ottawagardener on Mar 17, 2013 8:14:33 GMT -5
I forgot about that most excellent internet article.
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