I always enjoy doing the research for a book--sometimes I get so wrapped up in it that the writing itself seems almost anticlimactic. At the moment, it's the nightshade family that's captured my attention.
The nightshades are members of the Solancaea family, whichincludes such edible plants as the tomato, potato, eggplant, and chile pepper; decorative plants such as the petunia; and toxic plants such as datura (Jimson weed), tobacco, henbane, mandrake, and deadly nightshade, also known as belladonna.
The photo shows three of the nightshades growing within a hundred yards of our house. The yellow-green berries are the fruit of the silverleaf nightshade, which is considered a weed, and known to be toxic. They were used, I've read, to curdle milk when making cheese--other nightshade fruits have been used for the same purpose. The green and brown pouchy calyxes contain the fruit of the cutleaf ground-cherry, another member of the nightshade family, supposedly edible when ripe. (I think I'll give it a pass this season.) The orange ones? Oh, yes. Habanero chiles, the fruit of the plants Bill is growing on the porch. I don't intend to eat these little devils, either. They're not poisonous, but they are are hot, HOT, HOT.
After I had taken this photo, I realized I had missed several nightshades I could have included: the tomatoes in the fridge, potatoes in the bin, and an eggplant on the counter. They're not toxic, of course, although people once thought they were. Before the potato became the food staple of the people, it was thought to be a source of leprosy and an incitement to lust. And a potato almost killed Sir Walter Raleigh, when he ate the blossoms rather than the tuber.
And that's the sort of detail I love to dig up when I'm rooting around, doing research for China's novels. Picture me having fun!
Reading note. The wonderful thing about writing is that you're constantly having to ask yourself questions. It makes you function morally. It makes you function intellectually. That's the great pleasure and great reward of writing.--Robert Stone
If you will follow my counsell, deal not with Nightshade in any case, and banish it from your gardens and the use of it also, being a plant so furious and deadly.--John Gerard, The Herbal, 1598