Earlier I wrote about the questions surrounding the edibility of the infamous black nightshade, a plant that has been both feared because of it’s toxicity in Europe, and praised for its edibility (both fruit and leaves) elsewhere.

Dying of berry poisoning isn’t exactly my style, so I’m not just going to eat any black nightshade-berry that I come across. But I am adventurous enough to try out some cultivated strains that are confirmed as edible…

That’s why I tried 3 varieties of edible varieties from the S. nigrum complex this summer. If I received them under the right names they were the American garden huckleberry (S. melanocerasum), the very mysteriously named wonderberry (S. x burbankii) and a yellow-fruited variety sold as ‘golden pearls’ (S. villosum).
Due to strange weather (from an extremely cold almost wintery month of may we went directly to a summer of tropical weather too hot for many plants to grow much) a lot of plants (corn, tomatillo, pumpkins, amaranths) are a bit later than other years, and the nightshades are no exception to this, not just in the garden but everywhere where they grow as a weed too. But finally I’ve done the first test tasting the berries of all 3 nightshade types, even though not all of them have many ripe berries yet..

The good news: I am still alive.

The bad news: there’s not that much reason to get enthusiastic…

American garden huckleberry (Solanum melanocerasus)
Let’s start with the ‘American garden huckleberry’. It is the most atypical of the three, It is actually a very powerful vigorous plant with big berries growing erect in clusters, which seem to ripen almost at the same time per cluster. The berries are shiny and black, and the plant seems to produce quite a lot of them…
That’s the good news about the American garden huckleberry so far. The bad news is that it’s very conforming to the stereotype of a lot of things produced by Americans: big, shiny, lot of produce, but the quality is not that interesting. At least when raw the taste is not that very atractive, a bit like the jaltomatos I grew last year, but less sweet even and with a metal-ish quality to the taste.
I hope that they taste better when processed, and I’ll experiment with them later when all the berries are ripe. But I doubt they will ever become my favorite fruit….

Wonderberry (Solanum X burbankii)
Then the so-called wonderberry named after the famous American plant breeder Mr. Burbank. I personally don’t see what so wonderous about the plant at all. Maybe because my plant  has been overgrown by tree spinach and tomatoes, but it is not the biggest plant or most impressive, with small berries of less than 1 cm diamater. Just as with our native black nightshade the berries are growing in clusters and hanging, and dull black when ripe. Makes one wonder if what I’m growing here is not just a mislabeled edible strain of plain old S. nigrum…

The good thing is that the taste is maybe not that spectacular, but really not bad either, more sweetish. But it doesn’t yield much. Maybe next year I should let it grow in full sun.

‘Golden pearls’ (Solanum villosum)
The third one, the yellow ‘golden pearls’ of S. villosum, surprisingly looks a lot like the ‘wonderberry’ and like our native form of S. nigrum, with its small hanging berries, except for the color of the fruits, and the plants look generally a bit more fuzzy and soft. The taste is also quite similar to my wonderberry, and not bad at all although not that special either. It seems to grow a bit slower though, I only see 2 ripe berries and only after having eaten them I realised I photographed them with no memory card in my camera, so no picture of the ripe berries..

I am certainly not the biggest specialist of the black nightshade complex, but it’s easy to see that both whatever they sent me as wonderberry and the yellow-berried S. villosum are much closer related to the black nightshade I’ve known all my life than what I’ve received as the American garden huckleberry, and also that both of them are more interesting taste-wise. They have smaller berries and less yield, and they are not that special actually, but at least the taste is okay when raw.

The Garden Huckleberry will get one more chance to prove it’s tastiness later in the year, when all the berries are ripe and I will try to cook them with sugar or so. And if it doesn’t work I’ll never grow it again and leave it to the Americans to make something with it that suits their taste…
The others might be added to a dessert in small quantities when ripe, or just eaten when I’m working in the garden…

And who knows if I get access to another interesting variety next year. I actually want to try the Inidan ‘red Makoi’ variety of S. nigrum one day…

Bram