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Post by fruitnut on Aug 17, 2010 15:45:11 GMT -5
Solanum burbankii and Miltomato Vallisto plants produce copious amounts of small black currant sized fruit. I have planted about 12 of these plants this year and they are producing huge numbers of berries! The taste raw is somewhat sweet, however i have heard some folks claim a metallic taste when used in jam... has anyone had success with these specific varieties? Thanks, Teresa Attachments:
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Post by ottawagardener on Aug 17, 2010 16:19:19 GMT -5
I grow Sunberries. They look quite different from your plants. In fact, I think they look rather like the wild berry but I did get the seed several years back as a variety 'Sunberry.' They are good raw if you like blue / tomato taste which I do. Mostly my kids eat them but they do make their way into salads and desserts.
Like yours, mine produce copious amounts of small black fruit in bunches after producing small white flowers. The leaves are greyish/green and pepper like.
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Post by iva on Aug 18, 2010 1:08:43 GMT -5
Fruitnut, these look like Garden Huckleberries (Chichiquelite to be more precise) to me. Google it up and you will see if there is any similarity with your plants and fruits. If you do have Chichiquelite, you can eat them raw as soon as they turn black, they are quite tasty IMO. You can also cook them up into a jelly...
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Post by bunkie on Aug 18, 2010 15:02:11 GMT -5
fruitnut, i grew one of these plants this year, Wonderberry. i got the seed from Mapple Farm, and this is how they described it...
for us, it stayed about a foot and a half high and has been loaded with dark berries for quite while now. they taste sweet, sort of in between a blueberry and mulberry i think. haven't had enough to make jam or wine, but plan on growing several plants next year. i posted a pics of our under the 'bunkie doings' thread.
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Post by ottawagardener on Aug 18, 2010 15:17:33 GMT -5
This is my supplier as well.
I just noticed that they say it makes an awful good wine... another use, oh good!
Mine self seed btw.
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Post by spacecase0 on Aug 18, 2010 15:28:41 GMT -5
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Post by fruitnut on Aug 18, 2010 16:08:49 GMT -5
Mine came form Solana Seeds and last year they were only small plants with only a handful of fruit. Never tried making wine... tempting though.
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Post by bunkie on Aug 18, 2010 17:09:04 GMT -5
fruitnut, i thought the plants were supposed to stay small, like a foot plus? not sure why yours aren't producing much. our poor plant only gets a drink of water when i remember, and has been loaded with clusters since it reached that size! looking et your enlarged pics, it doesn't really look like my plant either?! here's a baad pics of mine...the leaves appear to be different and the fruit isn't in clusters on yours...  telsing, they do self seed? that's super and good to know! ;D |
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Post by blueadzuki on Aug 18, 2010 17:36:03 GMT -5
looking et your enlarged pics, it doesn't really look like my plant either?! here's a baad pics of mine...the leaves appear to be different and the fruit isn't in clusters on yours... Actually the seem to match up quite well, the reason for the confusion, I think is that, in Fruitnut's pic the wonderberry is in fact threaded into another plant thier stem isn't the one going up and down in the picture, but the one going sort of diagonally from upper left to lower right, the heavily dissected (tomato-like) leaves you can see next to it are (as far as I can tell) not attached to the fruit (the fruits leaves are over to the right, further in the background (follow the stem) |
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Post by ottawagardener on Aug 19, 2010 8:57:38 GMT -5
Man, I am so lazy when it comes to searching the millions of photos I have but somewhere on this board I posted a picture of my sunberries. Now, I feel compelled to find it (grumble, grumble) and post it again. You will notice much nibble damage as something thinks it's very yummy. The fruit are left alone. These ones were self seeded.  These are from last year and they were in pretty heavy shade. This year, plants appeared in a slightly less shady location, had more leaf (less nibbling) and were taller - about 2 feet, with lots of fruit. I don't know if you can see the slightly greyish sheen on the leaves but it's noticeable to me. |
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Post by wildseed57 on Aug 25, 2010 13:30:57 GMT -5
Hi (I grew Chichiquelite Huckleberry last year , about four plants by mid august I had more little black berries that I could eat. Its pretty close to the Garden Huckleberry only you can eat the fresh berries without cooking them. They have a anise like flavor which isn't to strong, but the flavor really improves when they are cooked with some sugar or sweetener I happen to use stevia instead of sugar because I'm diabetic, anyway they make a really nice jam or if you have a lot you can make pies with them or put them in muffins.
This year to my surprise I had loads come up without me planting any, so I can say that I will be doing the same again. As for flavor I would rather have blueberries, but as I now have several plants full of berries I might as well use them. My grand daughter really liked them, so I'm happy to let her eat all she wants, both the chichiquelite Huckleberries and Wonderberry are very high in antioxidants so they are very good for you, but like most Solanum plants some people can't eat them raw or cooked and you need to watch that you have the variety that you can eat raw. The Garden Huckleberry needs to be cooked as the raw berries can make some people very sick.
George W.
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Sept 5, 2010 12:45:00 GMT -5
@ fruitnut & ottawagardener,
Now i am really confused. I discovered this berry growing in my shady corn patch Yesterday. I posted a thread about it in the "Orchard" forum since i didn't know what it was. Then i found pictures on the Internet referring it as White Nightshade or Black Nightshade, and that it is supposedly poisonous. (hopefully a moderator will move my post to this Solanacae forum soon)
But, my plant looks just like the picture you posted. So is it a "Wonderberry" (or Sunberry" that ironically grows in the shade)? Or is it a "poisonous" wild nightshade?
The wild plant i found only grew about 1 foot high. Had leaves that tasted like wild spinach. And the pea-sized berry tasted similar to a gooseberry the first time, and like a kiwano fruit the second time. But, i only was able to really taste two.
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Post by blueadzuki on Sept 5, 2010 16:24:43 GMT -5
Okay keen, it's like this:
Black nightshade is Solanum Nigrum. What you probably have is American Nightshade, S. americanum (you did not mention it, but were the berries shiny? Sunberries are not). The berries of S. Americanum vary in toxcicity so unless they were unripe when you ate them, (which the fact you said they were black argues against) and or/you ate a LOT of them, you will be fine, people have been eating the raw fruit of that for ages.
Garden huckleberry is in fact a cultivar of S. Nigrum (S. Nigrum guiennense) selceted for sweeter and larger fruit, that's why it looks so close (gernally besides the dull fruit S. nigrum tends to bear in bigger clusters than S. americanum. Wonderberry (S. burbankii) is a cross between garden huckelberry and another nightshade species, S. villiosum
On and to finish clarifying the sweet pea that people eat in india (I assume you mean grasspea, Lathyrus sativus) isn't a matter of developing a resistance, its one of dosage. Lathyrism (the conditions caused by the toxins ODAP and BAPN) really only occurs when grasspea makes up more than 60% of the diet for a period of several months; smaller and shorter doses are usally flushed out of the body before harm is done. That's why you ususally get cases of the poisonng more in famine condition. Grasspea outlasts most other crops when there is a drought and rapidly beocme the one still available foodstuff
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Post by ottawagardener on Sept 5, 2010 17:58:32 GMT -5
Keen, to add to Blueadzuki's excellent answer, S. nigrum looks soooo much like Sunberry that I have double taked many times when weeding other people's gardens wondering if they too were growing the rarely cultivated Sunberry but it was probably S. nigrum not S. burbankii. However, I often wonder if my strain of S. burbankii has been diluted over the many, many years to be closer to S. nigrum than it was originally.
My children eat the ripe berries raw often in the summer months and suffer no obvious ill affect though they have never eaten them in very large quantities. As for S. nigrum, I have also heard of lots of people eating them when !ripe! also with no ill effect. This luck may vary from plant to plant, person to person, by dose and depending on the growing conditions.
As for them growing in the shade, especially the comparatively lighter shade of a corn patch, mine do quite well in varying amounts of light including quite a bit of shade between the raspberry patch and an evergreen hedge. Other solanums such as varities of tomatillo grow with corn so maybe it's not surprising?
I concur with the LISP description of the berry, btw.
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Post by blueadzuki on Sept 5, 2010 19:26:16 GMT -5
One final note, despite the species name, not ALL S. Nigrum's bear black berries. Apparently a red fruited version is found in India and is considered particualry valuable in Aryuvedic medicine.
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