Nightshade

Black Nightshade (Solanum nigrum)

With winter's grip firmly on the garden, things are relatively quiet at the moment. Even now, though, the occasional plant is still — or already — blooming. This Black Nightshade (Solanum nigrum) is tucked up against the brick wall of our summer house, out of the wind and sheltered by an enormous pile of branches from the trees that fell earlier this autumn. So it's still blooming, despite the fact that most of its fellows finished flowering months ago. Black Nightshade is an annual, but some will continue to flower until a hard frost finishes them off. Surprisingly, the very hard frost we had a week or so ago doesn't seem to have done the trick. It's a native British plant (or a very ancient introduction), so has had plenty of time to adjust to the local climate. Though common in England south of the Humber River (on the border between East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire), it's local elsewhere and virtually absent in Scotland. Its star-like flowers, with their recurved petals and their ring of bright yellow anthers, are pretty distinctive. Typically, the plant grows on nitrogen-enriched or cultivated / disturbed soils (but alternatively, also in waste places) and blooms from July to September. Since it can produce as many as 400 berries per plant (each containing up to 40 seeds), it can quickly become problematic in crop fields and gardens. Let's hope this one doesn't! Given that the berries are widely eaten by birds and small mammals (both of which occur in good numbers in our garden), hopefully at least some of the seeds won't end up germinating.