British Native Trees
and Shrubs

Woody Nightshade or Bittersweet 
Solanum dulcamara (Solanaceae)

Woody nightshade scrambles through hedges and over seaside shingle, displaying its vivid, star-shaped purple and yellow flowers from early summer through to autumn. Not to be confused with the poisonous Deadly nightshade, Atropa belladonna, this perennial is a member of the Potato family with creeping stems, woody below, which grow to around 3 m. Without hooks or twining stems, it relies on neighbouring plants, stones or simply the ground for support. The ovate to lance-shaped, alternate leaves, up to 9 cm long, are pointed and sometimes have two small lobes or leaflets at the base. From June to September, the branched clusters of flowers appear on stalks opposite the leaves, each up to 1.5 cm across with five, curved back, spear-shaped purple petals and five yellow anthers joined to form a pointed cone in the centre. The glossy, bright-red, egg-shaped or oval berries, up to 1.2 cm long, contain many rounded seeds.

Bittersweet is found in hedges, damp woodlands, rough ground, fens, ditches and pondsides and on shingle beaches throughout lowland England, but is rarer in the northern counties, reaching 310 m in Durham.

This plant will give a good long show of colour if it is trained on a trellis or a sunny wall, or it can be threaded through a hedge where both flowers and fruit will add interest and colour. It can also be grown over stone walls, twined through hazel twigs in the border or used as ground cover. But keep the berries away from children because they are mildly poisonous. The young stems contain a toxic alkaloid, solanine, bitter to the taste at first and then sweet, hence the alternative common name. It likes full sun and moist but well-drained soil. It is best propagated by taking soft or semi-ripe cuttings of short side shoots in summer. Stems will often form roots where they touch the ground and the rooted shoots can simply be removed and grown on.

Woody nightshade has a specialized flower to attract bees which release the pollen from holes at the tips of the anthers by rapidly vibrating their wings as they hang from the anther cone.

Page last updated - January 10, 2002  

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