Last updated Dec. 27, 2004

Carolina horse nettle (Solanum carolinense)

Pale lavender, pink or white Solanum carolinense flowers bloom May through October in fields, pastures and woodlands.

The flowers are about an inch wide. The prickly plant is typically one to four feet tall. The leaves are glossy green on top and silvery on the underside.

A member of the Nightshade family, and a relative of the Irish potato and the tomato, this plant produces a fruit that, while green, looks somewhat like a cherry tomato.

Unlike a tomato, the fruit turns yellow as it ripens. More important, the fruit is poisonous until it is fully mature and ripe.

The toxic agent which helped earned it the name "devis's tomato" is an alkaloid. Eating a sufficient quantity of any part of the plant can result in nausea, vomiting, excess salivation, drowsiness, abdominal pain, diarrhea, weakness and respiratory depression. The results may be fatal to both humans, especially children, and livestock.

North Carolina farmers call this native plant "devils's tomato" in part because it is so difficult to eradicate from pastures and crop lands.

Chop a horse nettle down, and it will sprout anew from the deep, rapidly spreading rhizomes.

Fail to chop down a single plant, and it can produce 5,000 seeds. The seeds can lie dormant for three years until favorable conditions bring them to germination.

Spine-covered leaves and stems make the plant a moderate hazard to hikers. The flowers are not unattractive, but altogether it is easy to see why the plant is widely classified as a noxious weed.

Taxonomic Classification

• Superdivision: Spermatophyta (seed plants)
• Division: Magnoliophyta (flowering plants)
• Class: Magnoliopsida (Dicotyledons)
• Subclass: Asteriae
• Order: Solanales
• Family: Solanaceae (potato family)
• Genus: Solanum (nightshade)
• Species: Solanum carolinense L. (Carolina horsenettle)
• Common Names: Carolina horse nettle (horsenettle), bull nettle, devil's tomato, horse nettle, Carolina nightshade, tread-softly, apple of Sodom, ball nettle, sand brier.

References

North Carolina State University's Poisonous Plants of North Carolina reference.

The ARS Germplasm Resources Information Network (GRIN) species account.

The USDA Plants Database entry for Carolina horsenettle.