Black nightshade
Solanum nigrum
Family · Solanaceae · Poisonous
Read this before the sheet
This plant, or one that resembles it, is dangerous. Identifying is not authorising: no app has the authority to tell you that you may eat or touch a plant.
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The garden weed with tiny white tomato-like flowers and pea-sized black berries. It is the most common toxic plant in the country's gardens and urban beds.
Town and roadside · Fields and pasture · Roadsides and waste ground
Also known asblackberry nightshade
How to tell it
A five-pointed white flower with a yellow cone centre, like a tomato's but small. Green berries turning glossy black, in hanging clusters. A soft plant with no spines.
What it is confused with
No dangerous lookalikes known in the Iberian Peninsula.
What it is for
None here. There are parts of the world where varieties of this species are eaten cooked, but European populations contain unpredictable amounts of solanine, especially in green berries. Not a plant for experiments.