An Alameda Garden: Can You Name This Plant?

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Can You Name This Plant?

Once again, I call upon the collective wisdom in the gardening blogosphere to help me identify another volunteer plant in my garden. Here it is.
It currently stands about 18-20 inches high. It has tiny white blossoms and it's also showing some signs of leaf curl (that alone makes me think I should yank it, but I'd still like to know what it is first). Any guesses?

5 comments:

  1. Your mystery plant is something in the solanacae family which includes, tomatoes, potatoes, eggplants, etc. I'm betting your plant is some sort of nightshade.

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  2. I agree with Steven, some sort of nightshade. Most nightshades are poisonous

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  4. I agree it looks to be in the Solanaceae, the Nightshade Family.

    The semi-winged leaves are interesting and might be a clue.

    Are there any berries or fruit? The color could be a key to identifying it.

    A detail of the flower could also help identify it.

    There are native nightshades, so if it were growing it my garden I wouldn't want to remove it until I could identify it.

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  5. Thanks to Steven, Carol, and Xris for leading me in the right direction. After you pointed me to the solanaceae family, I was able to tentatively identify it as Solanum americanum, American Black Nightshade. I'm going to wait until the berries appear so I can tell for sure. I've seen this described as both a native and an invasive, so I need to research a bit more to figure out whether it should stay or go.

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