Why is Bittersweet Nightshade (Solanum dulcamara) Poisonous? Is there anyway we can make it edible & is it worth it? It’s the most cold hardy woody Solanum I know & grows like a Weed in much of the temperate regions. From all the research I’ve done it appears the least toxic part is the fully ripe red berry. Green and yellowing Berries contain a higher percentage of the glycoalkaloids than ripe red fruits.
Phylogenic Trees show that the Black Nightshade Group (Morelloid Clade/Solanum nigrum complex) & the Bittersweet Nightshade Group (Dulcamaroid Clade) are sister to each other.
Why is one group edible but not the other? Black Nightshades were feared, thought to be poisonous but turns out fully ripe berries are Edible raw. Perhaps Bittersweet Nightshades Berries may also be edible if fully ripe?
Experienced Forager Samuel Thayer says the berries aren’t edible & Taste terrible. He knew of have 5 people who have eaten them repeatly with no ill effects. I trust what he says.
Could it be he only ate nasty forms (If non nasty forms exist)? Where does it get the bitterSweet part of it’s name? Did the 5 people he knew ate only the Fully Ripe Red Berries?
Here’s a 1990 Minnesota Study done with Mice Testing for the Toxicity of Green unripe Berries vs Ripe Red Berries of Bittersweet Nightshade (Solanum dulcamara).
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/20756626_Toxicity_of_nightshade_berries_Solanum_dulcamara_in_mice
1 group of Mice were fed Unripe Green Berries, another fed Ripe Red Berries & the other was control. Why did the Ripe Red Berry group fail to produce any signs of toxicity? Could it be that Toxic glycoalkaloids are significantly reduced when the berry ripens like with it’s Phylogenically Sister Black Nightshade? Green unripe Black Nightshade berries are toxic for similar glycoalkaloids reasons, it’s not far fetched to suggest Bittersweet Nightshade also functions in a similar way is it?
Why is there a scarcity of reported cases of poisonings from Nightshade berries? It’s specifically talking about Bittersweet Nightshade berries in the highlighted blue text right? If so this would match up with the 5 people Sam Thayer knew who ate the berries.
I also found this study comparing the composition of Green vs Red Berries of Bittersweet Nightshade. Not sure what it specifically means in terms of edibility.
“Some of the alkaloids exhibit high toxicity toward humans or animal organisms. According to the literature, trisaccharides containing α- and β-solamarines were present in bittersweet berries, with higher amounts in the unripe tissues”
“The amounts of steroidal alkaloids in bittersweet berries, identified in the present study, differed between MG and RR fruits (Table 1). MG fruits were a richer source of γ-solamarine, α-solasonine, α-solanine, abutiloside H, and solanandaine. On the other hand, solanidenediol triose derivatives, and leptines were much more abundant in RR fruits.”
What do you make of this? How do you understand it? If the smell indicates anything, From personal experience, crushed berries smell like Tomatoes.
With everything researched here, is it worth domesticating Bittersweet Nightshade? Could Black Nightshade x Bittersweet Nightshade Hybrid happen? Are they at least graft compatible? If so, it would be incredibility useful to make other solanum fruits cold hardy too.
, so I got the extra mile to make sure.
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. I’ve learned so much since joining these forums.
). Berries may or may not be equally edible like S. dulcamara, but this species has at least medicinal uses that I haven’t investigated yet. Unlike S. dulcamara, it has white flowers with green spots, Red to Orange Stamens & Wooly/Pillose Hairy Stems.
. We already have Lycianthes rantonnetii. Anyways this species also is not edible despite is closeness to S. dulcamara, altho this doesn’t look morphologically too similar with them skinny leaves. Not finding much excitement in the other Bittersweet Nightshades 
