North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["kieran or donna" <redherring@tnaccess.com>]

This is a pretty simple one.  The poison involved is solanine, which is
mostly gone in fully ripe fruit, and then should be further broken down in
cooking.  The whole family is toxic to some degree or another, with great
variation.  "Garden huckleberries" are very similar to black nightshade, and
are considered toxic raw, edible cooked, but they still taste terrible to
me.  There have been some low solanine "huckleberries" from time to time,
the former breeder at Territorial Seeds had a mixture available, he said if
you tasted a bitter one raw, spit it out immediately or it would make you
sick.  I grew some of his sweet ones, they were very nice both raw and
cooked, but the blister beetles wouldn't leave the plants alone, just ate
them up.  I'll try to remember the name of his company, oh yes, Tim Peters
of Peters Seed and Research...  He had some really fun stuff.  He also sells
a black nightshade or close relative which is used as cooked greens
somewhere on the planet.  The blister beetles kept me from having to decide
whether to try them.
    Others to consider are the tomatillos, which are apparently low in
solanine at all stages, and the ground cherries, which are quite nice both
raw and cooked but only when fully ripe and yellow!!!  Then there's the
shoo-fly plant, which looks similar but the fruit is dry and seedy, and not
worth finding out if it's edible.  (The plant smells very toxic)
    I caught my toddler in England tasting bittersweet nightshade, it tastes
terrible but won't kill you.  The big question I had when I called the
hospital was what color deadly nightshade berries are.  They wouldn't tell
me, kept insisting I bring in a peice of the plant.  I kept telling them I
was 45 min away by bus, and wound up getting the info from a friend's
college professor by phone.  I wasn't too worried, or I would never have
left the plant, but wanted to double check when I found him with the berries
dripped down his front.  I had a taste myself, and it was apparent from the
bitterness why they were on his shirt instead of inside him.
    There are other toxins in this family of course, not just nicotine, but
also in the carolina horse nettle there is the basis for the drug
scopalamine.  It was a drug used during childbirth, if I remember correctly
it's the one that didn't actually stop the pain, the women screamed bloody
murder, but afterward they didn't remember the pain, or the birth,... or the
baby.
    Do you all know any more toxins in this family?  I's an interesting
subject.  There are some weird plants in it that we don't usually see.
Donna