Two Edible Nightshades – at the Beach!

Yesterday we visited the beach after Mass. On the way, I came across a very nice mulberry tree by the highway, absolutely loaded with fruit. I’ll post a video on that tree soon. But at the beach itself, we first found a very thorny nightshade growing on the dunes.

At first I thought it might be a tropical soda apple, but with some searching it turned out to be a useful and edible species known colloquially as the “litchi tomato.”

Of course, the first place I turn for information on wild plant finds is Green Deane’s Eat The Weeds website.

He writes:

A native of South America, particularly Paraguay, it’s a hardy nightshade that reseeds itself and gets along quite nicely without man’s attention. So even though you may cultivate it, the wandering botanical often strikes out on its own.

In North America its distribution is rather unconventional. Going around the rim states of the US it is found from Oregon south and east to West Virginia excluding New Mexico. Then it goes to the mid-Atlantic states skipping Maryland. It is also recorded in Massachusetts and Ontario. You will have to look at specific state maps to identify the counties the Litchi Tomato has been found it. A tough member of a fragile family it can take a light frost even temperatures down to 25F. In warmer climes it overwinters (and gets more spiny!) A bushy indeterminate, it does, however, need more than one plant to cross pollinated.

In its native South America the Litchi Tomato has been used in local dishes since before written records. And most unusual for this genus it has spines yet is still edible. Usually plants in this genus with spines are very toxic if not deadly.

It’s a beautiful and wild-looking plant.

On the way back to the car, I came across a second nightshade, this one without thorns.

It always astounds me how plants can manage to survive in harsh maritime conditions. The sand whips around, the sun beats down, and salt is everywhere – yet here’s a pretty little nightshade, half-buried in the bright white Pensacola sand.

The blooms were what tipped my off to it being a nightshade. They look very much like other groundcherries I have seen, as well as the blooms of the cultivated tomatillo.

This plant is the coastal ground cherry. Green Deane also writes on this and its cousins:

Another ground cherry I’ve found tasty is the Coastal Ground Cherry (Physalis angustifolia) that I have found on the west coast of Florida. 

The fruit is edible raw or cooked, as in pies or preserves. The fruit can fall from the plant before it is ripe. That usually takes a week or two or more until the husk has dried and the fruit a golden yellow to orange. Each fruit is wrapped in a husk that is NOT edible. The fruit will store several weeks if left in the husk. Unripe fruit — light green — is toxic. Ripe fruits are light to golden yellow. If any ripe fruit has a bitter aftertaste should be cooked first. If it is still bitter after cooking, don’t eat it.

He further notes:

A wild species that takes to home gardening very well is Physalis angulata, the Cutleaf Ground Cherry. It’s tall and prolific under cultivation.

Which is cool, because a friend gave me a cutleaf ground cherry which is sitting in a pot in my greenhouse instead of living in the ground where it should be. I need to go grab it and plant it!

If you don’t have Green Deane’s book, I highly recommend it.

Though you may see just “weeds” as an inexperienced forager, over time you’ll start to recognize useful and edible species. Later, you’ll be able to recognize plant families, as we did with these nightshades.

Much to our satisfaction, both are edible. If we get a chance, we’ll go back soon and see if we can propagate both of them to bring home to our food forest.