Carolina Horsenettle

This is Solanum carolinense, Carolina horsenettle (or horse nettle), and USDA Plants tells us that it is found pretty much everywhere. It’s native in the US, but not in Canada, it can be invasive, and either way it can be pretty noxious.

The flowers look just like tomato flowers (or potato, or eggplant) and that places it in the Solanaceae along with all those others too. It will produce round fleshy fruits in the fall, and they look somewhat like small tomatoes. That gives it two of its other common names, devil’s tomato and apple of Sodom. Those names have an ominous quality to them, and there’s a good reason. All parts of this plant are toxic, including the fruits. Like many members of the Solanaceae the plants are pharmacopias of poisonous alkaloids.

Besides horse nettle, another common name is tread-softly, and both names reflect numerous spines along the stems and even along the midribs under the leaves. The flowers are sort of pretty, and it would be easy to fall victim to the picking impulse. Don’t. Life is full of surprises and grabbing one of these plants and getting a handful of the fragile spines is common to many gardeners.

Credit: Wayne Hughes, June 2009; photographed in the rolling hills of the Wolfskin district of the northeast Georgia Piedmont; used by permission. [source].

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