Wednesday, August 29, 2007

What a pretty vine!

Climbing nightshade

Our care of our yard is always hit-and-miss at best. This year, we've been downright neglectful, so some really interesting weeds have taken over. This is my favorite, a glorious vine with dainty purple flowers and beautiful berries that go from one vibrant shade to another.

It's taking over the house, using rhodies and drainpipes as its jungle gyms, and I've been pretty content to let it.


Turns out it's nightshade. But, hey, what's a little poison between friends!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The flowers, which appear in June and July, singly, in the axils of the leaves, and continue blooming until early September, are of a dark and dingy purplish colour, tinged with green, large (about an inch long), pendent, bell-shaped, furrowed, the corolla with five large teeth or lobes, slightly reflexed. The five-cleft calyx spreads round the base of the smooth berry, which ripens in September, when it acquires a shining black colour and is in size like a small cherry. It contains several seeds. The berries are full of a dark, inky juice, and are intensely sweet, and their attraction to children on that account, has from their poisonous properties, been attended with fatal results. Lyte urges growers 'to be carefull to see to it and to close it in, that no body enter into the place where it groweth, that wilbe enticed with the beautie of the fruite to eate thereof.' And Gerard, writing twenty years later, after recounting three cases of poisoning from eating the berries, exhorts us to 'banish therefore these pernicious plants out of your gardens and all places neare to your houses where children do resort.' In September, 1916, three children were admitted to a London hospital suffering from Belladonna poisoning, caused, it was ascertained, from having eaten berries from large fruiting plants of Atropa Belladonna growing in a neighbouring public garden, the gardener being unaware of their dangerous nature, and again in 1921 the Norwich Coroner, commenting on the death of achild from the same cause, said that he had had four not dissimilar cases previously.

It is said that when taken by accident, the poisonous effects of Belladonna berries may be prevented by swallowing as soon as possible an emetic, such as a large glass of warm vinegar or mustard and water. In undoubted cases of this poisoning, emetics and the stomach-pump are resorted to at once, followed by a dose of magnesia, stimulants and strong coffee, the patient being kept very warm and artificial respiration being applied if necessary. A peculiar symptom in those poisoned by Belladonna is the complete loss of voice, together with frequent bending forward of the trunk and continual movements of the hands and fingers, the pupils of the eye becoming much dilated.

get rid of it.
unca scott

Ronnie said...

Don't worry, we've already started yanking it out!

Ronnie said...

Okay, I did a little more ungardening this morning (9/1). Phew! It's a shame -- that nightshade is probably the healthiest plant I've ever grown. :-)