eastern black nightshade

not listed

N3N5 - Vulnerable to Secure

SNR - Unranked

not listed

County noxious weed in Steele and Waseca Counties. (MDA approved with restrictions due to it being a native species.)

FACU - Facultative upland

FACU - Facultative upland

FACU - Facultative upland

Eastern black nightshade is a 6″ to 24″ tall, erect, annual forb that rises from a slender taproot.

The stems are erect and branching and are covered with short, incurved hairs, especially near the top.

The leaves are alternate, egg-shaped to triangular, and ¾″ to 3″ long, ⅜″ to 2″ wide, on long, slender leaf stalks. The margins have 2 to 5 irregular, blunt teeth on the lower half, no teeth on the upper half. There are scattered, short, incurved hairs on the upper and lower surfaces, especially on the lower surface. The underside is green when young, turning purplish or purple with age.

The inflorescence is an umbrella-shaped cluster of 3 to 10 flowers on an ascending stalk (peduncle) up to 1⅛″ long arising from the upper portion of the stem, not from leaf axils, and not at the end of the stem.

The individual flowers are on nodding, closely-clustered stalks that originate at more or less the same point at the end of the peduncle. The peduncle and the individual flower stalks are covered with short, incurved hairs. The flowers are from less than ¼″ to ⅓″ wide. There are 5 white petals that are widely spreading, eventually curving backward, and form no tube at the base. There are 5 stamens with large yellow anthers projecting from the center of the petals. The anthers converge around the style but are not actually fused together.

The fruit is a berry, green and mottled when young, black or purplish black when ripe. At the base of the fruit the sepals (calyx) has 5 bluntly triangular lobes that are spreading and do not cup the berry.

6″ to 24″

White

Rocky and dry open woods, thickets, openings, lake shores. Disturbed and cultivated areas.

June to October

The leaves and immature berries are poisonous. Ripe berries are not poisonous but should not be eaten.

Sources

2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 28, 29, 30.

Native

Common

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the black nightshade in eastern North America was classified as a single widespread and highly variable species Solanum nigrum. Later it was classified (by some) as Solanum ptychanthum, occurring throughout eastern North America. More recently, it was classified as Solanum emulans, and Solanum ptychanthum is treated as a synonym of Solanum americanum, a species occurring in the United States only in the extreme south and on the West Coast.

Today (2023) there is widespread agreement that Solanum nigrum is the wrong name, but there is little agreement on the correct name.

• BONAP, USDA PLANTS, ITIS, and NCBI use the name Solanum ptychanthum.
• GRIN, World Flora Online, and iNaturalist use the name Solanum emulans.
• GBIF and Plants of the World Online use the name Solanum alatum.
• MNTaxa and the Minnesota Biodiversity Atlas use the name Solanum nigurm var. virginicum.

Inflorescence

Leaves

Stem

Infructescence