You've found the famous Dave's Garden website! Join this friendly global community that shares tips and ideas for home and gardens, along with seeds and plants!
Check out the DG homepage for a brief overview of what you'll find in this gardening mega-site.
Login
If you don't have an account yet, visit the registration page to sign up.
For today we will pay a short visit to a special botanical family which hosts plants used daily as food, condiment or mild drugs as well as plants which contain some of the most effective poisons amongst green kingdom but also a very important number of species used as ornamentals either in the tropics or temperate areas, therefore a prominent family but to be met with circumspection!
This prolific family is the Solanaceae one that numbers more than 2500 species from warm and temperate areas, America being the richest place. The family is spliced into 147 genera, the Solanum genera itself having no less than 1000 species. It is mostly annual or perennial herbs, shrubs or small trees or even vines. Leaves are usually alternate, flowers vary in size from 5mm to more than 20cm and offer all the possible colours.
Since we are at Dave's Garden let's start with the ornamental species, those lovingly nurtured by many a gardener for the delight of our eyes and often noses as many are perfumed like the night jasmine which produces a very strong and sweet perfume when night falls, and dot let you fooled by the common name, this Cestrum nocturnum is not a jasmine which belongs to the Oleaceae family. If we stay in the perfume realm but adding a colourful effect, Brunfelsia uniflora is a must and is actually planted in the front garden of many a Creole house on Reunion. Not only does it fill the air with a subtle though persistent odour but also the flowers first blow a deep purple and slowly loose colourings until they end white just before falling thus producing a multi-coloured bush. Another nicely perfumed one with stunning flowers is Brugmansia, either B. suaveolens, B. aurea or one of the very numerous hybrids created so far. The large pendulous flowers can be 20 inches long and release a nice perfume with lemon scents at the end of the day. They are often mistaken as Datura and although rather close botanically the later have erect flowers and are short-lived while Brugmansia are perennial and bear pendulous flowers. Still another sweet-scented bloom with a very showy flower, the ‘cup of gold', Solandra maxima is a vine with powerful stems up to 50m (150 feet) long and flowers up to 20cm, golden yellow with five dark lines inside the corolla. We will now walk around this colourful bed of Petunia, one of the most widely grown plants of the family all over the world in gardens, balconies and so on. What is mostly grown is Petunia x hybrida with large multi coloured and often stripped petals.
So now we will step in the kitchen as many a member of the family is to be found there and Creole food would simply not be the same without a few of those. Lycopersicon esculentum, the tomato, which species name describes well enough how tasty it should be is used as salad, sauces, stuffed, roasted, soups, jellies. Hard to imagine spaghetti without basil-tomato sauce on or pizza with just olives and cheese...And of course as we all like a little spice in our lives the Capsicum genera has a whole range of peppers, from mild almost sweet ones to burning Jalapenos and all the in-betweens. Peppers have been grown for thousands of years so we have now enough choice to grow a pepper garden as there are dwarf ones, larges ones, fruits colours ranging from white, yellow, orange, red, green, purple, black, all size and shapes, all levels of fire in the mouth! Let us not forget the Queen even if her dress is not very luxurious, Solanum tuberosum is so much eaten as chips, French fries, mashed, boiled, fried, turned into gnocchi and so on that I will not even bother in giving her common name. Solanum melongena has been appreciated by cooks and gourmets and even Michael Franks has written a song on eggplant. Let us add that this one comes from India while all the other members of the family met in the kitchen beforehand were American. But a kitchen is a melting pot...For dessert we may choose between tree-tomato, (Cyphomandra betacea), Cape goose berry (Physalis peruviana) or its close cousin Physalis angulata. And for those who are still hooked on it a few puffs of dried leaves of Nicotiana tabacum in a pipe will bring us back in the garden for fresh air.
As we went from kitchen to drugs with the aid of tobacco let us stick to the subject. The Solanaceae family is famous for many highly toxic plants, which have been used by sorcerers, witches and doctors because of the high level of alkaloids they contain. European witches would never go out on Sabbath without a purse full of ointment partly made with the deadly devil's trumpet, Datura metel. All Datura species contain many active compounds, atropine is reputed to produce hallucinations that give people the feeling they are flying in the air hence the common association between witches and flying brooms.
What a family really, it definitely offers the best and the worse, not too different from human families after all...not surprisingly the Solanaceae is a botanical family known a ethno botanical because many members are used throughout the world by human beings for a wide range of uses as depicted above.
About Jean-Jacques Segalen
I am a Parisian born professional horticulturist specialized in tropical seeds producing, set on Reunion island (just between Mauritius and Madagascar) 17 years ago. I spend a lot of time gathering seeds in the wild, the ones I do not grow that is. Also a dedicated Tai-Chi practitioner and tree climber!
Posted by Jo_anna (from brisbane
(Australia)) on January 1, 2009 at 9:44 PM:
My mother planted this as a cutting in my garden about 9 mths ago it has grown beautifully and the scent is amazing however it has grown an awkward shape and is lopsided due to the paw paws living beside it. I would like to prune it, it has just finished flowering, when would be the best time to prune it and how do I go about doing it. It is growing from a growth point at the base of the plant about 11/2 metres high. Thank you to anyone who can help
johanna
...
Posted by Jo_anna (from brisbane
(Australia)) on January 1, 2009 at 9:52 PM:
sorry I didn't mean to confuse you , the plant is 11/2 metres high not the growth point! do these plants usually grow like this? the other photos I've seen of these plants dont grow this way.
...
Posted by jjacques (from LE TAMPON
(Reunion (French))) on January 8, 2009 at 5:57 AM:
Hi Jo Anna
This plant is a quite opportunist one and will take various shapes depending on the conditions but it is a tough one, you can prune it very sharply and it will grow back, my neighbour has a large one and he prunes it back to ground level every once in a while and soon after it just sprouts like mad. I prune mine when they become too large, preferably after flowering.
JJ
...
Subject: Article to read and read again! Tagged!
Posted by Lily_love (from Central, AL) on June 28, 2008 at 8:45 AM:
Thank you J.J.
...
Posted by jjacques (from LE TAMPON
(Reunion (French))) on June 28, 2008 at 10:35 AM:
Thank you for appreciating!
JJ
...
Subject: Allergic to Nightshades!
Posted by Molamola (from Christiansted
(Virgin Islands (USA))) on June 23, 2008 at 9:35 PM:
I am very allergic to tomatoes, potatoes, peppers and eggplants-- I get symptoms similar to arthritis!
I thought I was two hundred years old when I was nineteen, oh! Constant pain I was in. Then I read a small article in Organic Gardening magazine that spoke of the not uncommon, but little known allergy. I was eating Italian and Mexican foods, french fries and home fries with ketchup. A generally diverse 'normal' American diet, as well as growing lots of tomatoes and munching them right in the garden.
One week off these vegetables, and I was free from pain. The arthritis specialist Doctor who wrote the article said 10% of his patients cleared up from pain completely, 80% had various improvement, and 10% had no improvement.
I hope this helps someone!
Molamola, aka Melissa
...
Posted by jjacques (from LE TAMPON
(Reunion (French))) on June 24, 2008 at 7:42 AM:
Woh, I never heard of this before, I mean I heard of allergy of course, sometimes to one fruit or another but not to many fruits of the same botanical family, but of course ot makes sense as plants of a common family very often contain similar compounds which you must be allergic to.
Thanks or sharing this, you may have relieved some people!
...
Posted by Molamola (from Christiansted
(Virgin Islands (USA))) on June 24, 2008 at 7:00 PM:
Yes, the white tissue that hold together muscle, and muscle to bone becomes inflamed.
The Big Drug companies have no treatment, so we don't hear of this allergy.
I think it was Benjamin Franklin who at a tomato in public to prove they are not poisonous.
...
Posted by jjacques (from LE TAMPON
(Reunion (French))) on June 25, 2008 at 12:45 AM:
As one says everything is in nature.
Courageous Ben!
...
Subject: tree tomato
Posted by stellamarina (from Laie, HI) on June 23, 2008 at 3:40 PM:
one of my favorite fruits. They are grown a lot in New Zealand so when I go for a visit there during the tree tomato season I buy a whole bag full to keep me going for breakfast. Steep the fruit in boiling water for a few minutes to easily peel the skin off. Then slice the fruit up and give it a sprinkle of sugar.....then it sits in a bowl in the fridge for me to get a daily serving from. Beautiful with ice-cream or custard too. seeing as the name tree tomato did not sound very sexy for marketing....you now see them called tamarillos in the super market. They are such a pretty small tree in the garden too with the red fruit glowing on them like rubies.
...
Posted by jjacques (from LE TAMPON
(Reunion (French))) on June 24, 2008 at 7:39 AM:
Sure, a handsome small tree very decorative when covered with fruits. Here we have to varieties, one with orange fruits and one with blood red ones but taste is similar. I like them a lot out of hand but we also make jellies and locals make 'rougail' with them, a hot sauce that is usually done with tomatoes. Tamarillo certainly sounds more appetizing than tree tomato!
...
Subject: Physalis peruviana
Posted by abuelamari (from Indianapolis, IN) on June 23, 2008 at 8:56 AM:
Thank you for your wonderful article. Where could I get a plant of Physalis peruviana? not the cousin though. I am Peruvian and would love the have these berries available from my garden. Do they grow in zone 5, Indianapolis?
In Lima, Peru you can see the Brugmasia trees growing everywhere and there is an old saying that warns not to fall asleep under one or you will never wake up...
...
Posted by jjacques (from LE TAMPON
(Reunion (French))) on June 23, 2008 at 9:15 AM:
I guess you could find plants with people of the Rare Fruits Growers Association, they have a website at [HYPERLINK@www.crfg.org] , they would also be able to tell you about your zone.
Funny, we have the same saying in France about walnut tree, like if you take a nap under one you will get strong sucidal tendencies. It is understandable regarding Brugmansia which is rather toxic and blooms at night can make sensitive people dizzy but I do not see any danger about walnut except if the whole tree falls on your head!
...
Posted by AzTrees08 on September 25, 2008 at 3:50 PM:
I have a question about the thevitia peruviana aka lucky nut tree aka be still tree.
i planted three around april 08. they're not doing well. all of the information on the net says 'ample' water or water regularly but also says 'do not over water this tree'
Its not specific enough for me. i have drip irrigation throughout my yard. on these trees i have two 2GPH drippers and the timer is set on 35minutes ever other day. Alot of the leaves turned yellow and dropped. I then plugged the drippers thinking im overwatering. Then the trunks started to turn yellow and i thought it was sun scorch so i covered the trunks through the months of july and aug. I have removed the coverings from the trunks but they are still yellowish. They dont seem to be thriving. I tried just 1 2GPH dripper but still got some of the leaves turning yellow and dropping. so again, i plugged the drippers thinking its still too much water. although when i dig around the bottom root area the ground is hard and dry for about an inch deep and about a foot down is a little moist. I am so confused, am i overwatering or underwatering?
I dont want to lose these trees they were expensive. They are about 9 feet tall and the trunks about an inch and 1/2 in diameter.
Thanks for any information.
...
Posted by jjacques (from LE TAMPON
(Reunion (French))) on September 26, 2008 at 4:32 AM:
Hello
We do have many Thevetia here both in gardens along the road, from what I see they seem to prefer the dry side, they do all right on the West coast of Reunion which can be quite harsh, on loose rocky or sandy soil, so I guess overwatering might be the thing, most plants of the Apocynaceae family often do better with less water.
Hope this helps.
...
Subject: Now he's talking about potatoes!
Posted by gloria125 (from Greensboro, AL) on June 22, 2008 at 10:48 AM:
Excellent. Who would know that all of these plants are related to each other!
I am a brugmaniac myself. And I love potatoes - Yukon Gold.
...
Posted by jjacques (from LE TAMPON
(Reunion (French))) on June 23, 2008 at 12:56 AM:
So do I love both but don't ever use Brug leaves to enhance your potatoes or you may see witches flying in your kitchen!
...
Posted by gloria125 (from Greensboro, AL) on June 23, 2008 at 7:27 AM:
I guess one solanaceae at a time would be a good rule!
...
Posted by jjacques (from LE TAMPON
(Reunion (French))) on June 23, 2008 at 9:09 AM:
Well, I would not try Brug tea even one at a time, I am not as adventurous as I used to years ago...
...
Posted by gloria125 (from Greensboro, AL) on June 23, 2008 at 9:42 AM:
It is good when with age comes wisdom!
As I remember when tomatoes were introduced to Europe, the Europeans refused to eat them because they were solonaceae - poisonous. I mean I remember READing that. I wasn't here in the 1700s!
Now it seems we have come full circle with the salmonella contamination of tomatoes in the USA.
...
Posted by jjacques (from LE TAMPON
(Reunion (French))) on June 23, 2008 at 10:50 AM:
Wisdom is not exactly what I would say, I still indulge in not-too serious activities but time changes anyway.
It was the potatoes people thought were poisonous and a very famous man called Parmentier had the idea of growing them behind a guarded fence so people got the idea it was valuable after all and has it was of course loosely guarded they managed to sneak in and grab the potatoes. Hard to imagine life without those tubers nowaday!
...
Subject: Metel
Posted by gofast (from Fes
(Morocco)) on June 22, 2008 at 2:53 AM:
Hi Jean-Jaques,
I was wondering what the term "metel" meant is that Greek for deadly or develish?
Martin
...
Posted by onewish1 (from Denville, NJ) on June 22, 2008 at 6:33 AM:
good question
I enjoyed your article..... thank you
...
Posted by jjacques (from LE TAMPON
(Reunion (French))) on June 22, 2008 at 9:09 AM:
Hello Martin
To tell the truth I have no idea, I know that death is thanatos in Greek. Sometimes species name refer to a colour, an aspect of the plant, the place where it grows or the botanist who discovered it but I have no clue for metel. I will search and let you know if I find some interesting thing.
JJ
...
Posted by onewish1 (from Denville, NJ) on June 22, 2008 at 9:22 AM:
Posted by onewish1 (from Denville, NJ) on June 22, 2008 at 9:23 AM:
this might
Veterinary Dictionary: hairy
Characterized by a covering of hairs.
* h. angels trumpet datura metel.
* h. caltrop kallstroemia hirsutissima.
* h. caterpillars elongated mucosal erosions occur in mouths of horses grazing pasture infested with hairy caterpillars. See also erosive stomatitis.
* h. cell leukemia a condition of humans, of which a counterpart is seen in cats. Previous name was reticuloendotheliosis.
* h. gousiektebossie pachystigma pygmaeum.
* h. millet see panicum effusum.
* h. panic grass see panicum effusum.
* h. shakers see border disease.
* h. thornapple datura metel.
* h. vetch see vicia villosa.
...
Posted by jjacques (from LE TAMPON
(Reunion (French))) on June 22, 2008 at 9:30 AM:
Mmhh, strange as it is not hairy...I keep searching!
...
Posted by Potagere (from (Jim) Farges
(France)) on June 22, 2008 at 9:50 AM:
This sounds like a possibility:
"In the Old World, Datura has had a long history as a medicine and sacred
hallucinogen. Early Sanskrit and Chinese writings mention Datura metel. It
was undoubtedly this species that the Arabian doctor Avicenna reported in
the eleventh century under the name Jouz-mathal ("metal nut"); this report
was repeated in Dioscorides's writings. The name Metel is taken from this
Arabic term, while the generic epithet Datura was adapted to Latin by
Linnaeus from the Sanskrit Dhatura." Found at :
I am so envious!!! I have most of the "common" solanaceae growing down in the garden (plus, I now discover that I have another: petunias! I never realized they were also solanaceae, but they do have that characteristic trumpet-shaped flower, now don't they? I wonder if I can cross a petunia with a potatoe and get a plant that looks as good as it tastes? Sigh!!! Probably not!) but I'll never have all those wonderfully fragrant ones here! I may have to visit Reunion! Lucky jjacques!
...
Posted by jjacques (from LE TAMPON
(Reunion (French))) on June 22, 2008 at 10:45 AM:
Interesting, indeed unripe D.metel fruits have a shiny smooth aspect like metel.
I do not think potato and petunia would cross as they belong to different genera which usually means genetic barriers but who knows, you may give birth to Petutato!
JJ
...
Posted by ecrane3 (from Dublin, CA) on June 22, 2008 at 12:28 PM:
Potager is correct---Botanary lists the definition of metel as the Arabic vernacular for the fruit of the plant. [HYPERLINK@davesgarden.com]Botanary/search.php?search_text=metel
...
Posted by carrielamont (from Milton, MA) on June 22, 2008 at 12:50 PM:
So petunias are related to tomatoes and potatoes? Who knew? I sure didn't! Merci, Jean-Jacques, for educating us once more!
This message was edited Jun 22, 2008 12:51 PM
...
Posted by jjacques (from LE TAMPON
(Reunion (French))) on June 23, 2008 at 12:53 AM:
Yes they all belong to the same family as well as tobacco and hot pepper, goog thing that tomatoes don't taste like cigarettes though!
...
Posted by judithht (from Rockmart, GA) on June 23, 2008 at 8:04 AM:
Super essay! I couldn't eat without the Solanacaea--I went macrobiotic for about 7 weeks (or was it years?) and the whole family, lima beans & all, were off my diet. The only thing I'd have amended in your essay--I'd have liked just a mention of Mandragora off., Hyoscyamus niger, Atropa belladonna! And Datura metel--wasn't it more common in the Indian subcontinent, less used in European folk traditions than Datura stramonium was? *Great* article! Thanks! (I love Taiji, too!)
...
Posted by jjacques (from LE TAMPON
(Reunion (French))) on June 23, 2008 at 9:08 AM:
Hu Judith
I though macrobiotic was based on whole cereals and yin-yang balance, plants of the Solanaceae family are regarded as very yin (tomatoes, hot pepper at least).
Indeed, Mandragora and Atropa are important plants amongts witches and poisoners but I just could not scan the whole family. D.metel originates from India and was probably brought by gypsies when they traveled to Europe. Yes, D.stramonium was the one most widely used in Europe. Taiji is a kind of macrobiotic for both body and mind using movements, breathing and concentration instead of food but both a close enough.
JJ
