Not berry good idea for lunch
A TOWNSVILLE woman got a scare after she took berries to a lunch which were initially believed to be deadly.
Margaret Melville, 86, of Aitkenvale, said she had found the small green and black berries growing under a pawpaw tree in her garden.
At the lunch, where Mrs Melville passed the berries around, a lady identified them as being from the deadly nightshade plant.
“I looked on Google and it has several websites. One article said: ‘ ingesting just two to four berries from deadly nightshade can kill a child ( and) 10 to 20 berries can kill an adult’,” Mrs Melville said.
However, University of Queensland Deputy Head of School of Agriculture and Food Sciences Victor Galea said the berries belonged to the blackberry nightshade plant, and were related to tomatoes.
“I don’t think it’s as poisonous as the deadly nightshade,” Dr Galea said. “It’s not recommended ( eating them) because they are mildly poisonous but then again so were tomatoes when they were originally domesticated.”
Dr Galea said tomatoes, originally from South America, took about 500 years of domestication to make them less bitter and breed out the poison. He said blackberry nightshade was a widely spread weed found all around the world and found in most states and territories in Australia.
Blackberry nightshade has white flowers and grows to about 1.3m tall, producing a dull black or purple- black berry 8- 10mm in diameter.
Dr Galea said the discovery of the berries in Mrs Melville’s garden highlighted that there were a number of poisonous plants which grow in Townsville.
Mrs Melville said she had never before heard of the nightshade plants.
“Nobody to whom I have spoken about it, has ever heard of it,” she said.
“If it’s that dangerous it should be better known.
“I feel it should be common knowledge.”
Mrs Melville said she never planted the fruit in her garden but believed birds may have dropped some fruit when flying over her house.