Black Nightshade - Medicinal Plant

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Black nightshade - unopened berry

Black nightshade (Solanum nigrum L.) is a spring herbaceous annual up to 100 cm high. Its stem is erect, highly branched. Leaves are dark green, alternate, ovate, elliptical-ovate, or almost triangular, pointed, narrowed into a short petiole, angularly notched at the edges.

Young nightshade leaves can be used as spinach and in salads. Flowers are five-petal, small, collected in umbellate inflorescences. They look like potato flowers (after all, both of these plants are of the same family). The nightshade blooms from June to late autumn.

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The fruit is a berry, dark purple, almost black. Sometimes they can be yellow, green, or white. Nightshade bears fruit in July - October; not all fruits ripen. They taste good and can be eaten raw or used as pie filling. The opinion about their toxicity is wrong.

Black nightshade grows in garbage places, on roadsides and railways, like a weed in vegetable gardens. Prefers loose, moderately moist soils.

In the Northwest, it is quite rare. The nightshade propagates by seeds that germinate at temperatures above + 10 ° C. Seedlings can appear from May to late summer.

In our nature, almost no one picks its berries, perhaps because they do not know about their edibility, but rather because of their rarity. It makes no sense to start picking them because of 20 or even 100 berries. And another instance may not be found.

The aboveground part of the plant contains: glycoalkaloids solacein and solanein, alkaloid solanine, saponins, tannins, carotene, citric acid, vitamin C. And in ripe fruits - sugars, organic acids, tannins, vitamin C.

The use of black nightshade in folk medicine

Scientific medicine of our country does not use black nightshade. But it is included in the pharmacopoeias of Great Britain, France, Turkey, Portugal and some other countries. In our country, nightshade is used only in homeopathy as an antidote for ergot poisoning. In folk medicine, it is used much more widely.

For example, folk healers use an infusion or decoction of nightshade herb as a sedative for increased nervous excitability, for headaches, as an anticonvulsant, pain reliever, wound healing for hemorrhoids, for allergies, rheumatism, ear pain, cramps and pain in the stomach and intestines, to reduce blood pressure as an antiseptic.

A decoction of nightshade herb is prepared as follows: 20 g of dry leaves are placed in 1 liter of water, boiled for 10 minutes. The broth is drunk 1 tablespoon three times a day. Pounded fresh leaves are placed on abscesses to ripen and on swellings to dissolve.

Eating black nightshade fruit in food improves visual acuity. In addition, they have anthelmintic and mild laxative properties, help patients with hypertension, as well as atherosclerosis.

With these diseases, the fruits of nightshade are taken at 5-6 g per day. A decoction of ripe fruits - (2 tablespoons of berries are boiled in 1 glass of water) take 1 tablespoon four times a day for stomach pains, enterocolitis, intestinal colic, urine - and gallstone diseases, edema, rheumatism, neuroses, eczema.

In addition, nightshade helps with angina and diphtheria. The juice of its ripe berries is instilled into the nose for chronic rhinitis. The infusion of flowers is also curative, it has a diuretic, expectorant and laxative effect. It is prepared as follows: 1 teaspoon of nightshade flowers is brewed with one glass of boiling water and infused for 3-4 hours (more convenient in a thermos), drunk three times a day.

From the nightshade berries scalded with boiling water, you can make a filling for pies, cook jam and jam. They are a good food coloring for imparting color to processed products from lightly colored fruits and berries. The entire aerial part of the plant is a good insecticide against caterpillars and larvae.

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In Western Europe and America, this type of nightshade was domesticated, and there are quite decent harvests of berries of cultivated varieties of black nightshade. This is the same Sunberry. Some of its varieties have already come to our country.

Of course, there are many types and varieties of berries with a much better taste than nightshade, even domesticated. But he also has one indisputable advantage - he is an annual plant and gives a crop in the very first year.

This is especially important for those who are just starting to develop the site. Someday the newly planted currants, gooseberries, sea buckthorn, and other bushes and trees will begin to bear fruit. And the Sunberry harvest for novice gardeners in the first year will be guaranteed. In addition, do not discount the medicinal and decorative beneficial properties of this plant.

It's probably time for our breeders to start breeding domestic varieties of black nightshade, and experienced amateur gardeners could also take part in this work. Moreover, since it is an annual, the breeding of a new variety can be achieved quite quickly, in a few years. It is important that the resulting hybrids take unpretentiousness and stability from our wild parental forms, and from foreign varieties - the size of the fruits, yield and taste.

See also: Sarakha, cyfomandra, solyanum and other exotic plants of the Solanaceae family