When I was a kid, I ordered seeds of garden huckleberry from a seed catalog, starting them indoors “like a tomato plant” as per instructions. This gave me a shrubby upright plant with small green leaves, star-shaped nodding flowers much like those of a tomato, but white instead of yellow, and clusters of round black berries. It was certainly easy enough to grow. I was quite enthralled … until I tried eating them.
The description on the seed packet said they needed to be cooked before eating, so my sister and I tried cooking them in a little pan in her Easy-Bake oven (a popular kid’s toy at the time). They weren’t particularly tasty: in fact, they were quite bitter, so we added sugar. And more sugar. And more sugar. We ended up with a sort of dark purple syrup which you perhaps pour on pancakes. Others use garden huckleberries (with sugar) to make pie filling and jams.
To be honest, we didn’t much like it.
But What Is It?
My childhood experience ended there. Far from my 10-year-old brain to stop and ask what that plant really was. But as an adult gardener, I wanted to know … and now I’m more confused than ever!
About 30 years ago, I wrote an article on edible plants in the Solanaceae family, in which I mentioned, obviously, tomatoes (then called Lycopersicon esculentum, now Solanum lycopersicum), potatoes (S. tuberosum), eggplants/aubergines (S. melongena), ground cherries (Physalis pruinosa) and peppers (Capsicum annuum), among others. And I included garden huckleberries as S. nigrum, according to the taxonomy of the time.
Flash forward to today and things are much more complicated. There is now a “Solanum nigrum complex” including various species related to S. nigrum, that is, belonging to the Solanum section Solanum of the vast genus Solanum (more than 1500 species). This group includes S. melanocerasum, S. villosum, S. americanum, S.scabrum, S. retroflexum and many others.
S. nigrum itself is more properly called black nightshade or European black nightshade and is considered poisonous, causing sickness and even death in all sorts of animals, including cattle, sheep, poultry, pigs and humans, mostly after eating raw stems and leaves or unripe, green berries. The mature berries of some clones are edible after cooking as are the young leaves and shoots (the latter two are widely consumed in Southeast Asia and Africa, often with the cooking water being discarded and replaced several times to remove toxins). Other clones may remain poisonous, even after cooking. But nobody seems really sure, because in general, no one knows which species of the S. nigrum complex are actually being ingested.
A garden vegetable that may or may not be poisonous? How encouraging!
Garden Huckleberry or Wonderberry?
And then there is the wonderberry.
As I child, I also read about the wonderberry (S. x burbankii), created by Luther Burbank by crossing Solanum guineense with S. villosum. Today that’s considered improbable. S. guineense and S. villosum are not closely related and don’t even have the same number of chromosomes. It would be a bit like crossing a giraffe with an antelope and coming up with a fertile giraffalope.
Wonderberries are still around, with black berries that are edible after cooking, but are now considered to belong to the species S. retroflexum, sometimes called sunberry: one of the species of the S. nigrum complex. So, Luther Burbank apparently got it wrong. Well, anyone can make mistakes!
If you’re not confused by now, you should be!
For fun, try sowing Wonderberry and garden huckleberry seeds side by side and comparing. You won’t notice much of a difference.
True Huckleberries
Of course, the name garden huckleberry is a serious misnomer to start with. True huckleberries (Vaccinium spp. and Gaylussacia spp.) are closely related to blueberries and are in the Ericaeae family. Essentially, they’re blueberries that aren’t blue, but black or red.
True huckleberries are in no way related to the garden huckleberry, which is in the Solanaceae family. But yes, you can use them to make huckleberry pie!
Will the Real Garden Huckleberry Please Stand Up?
That still leaves a mystery as to what the garden huckleberry really is. Presently, Wikipedia lists S. scabrum as being the correct name for the garden huckleberry. But other sources say it is S. melanocerasum. Yet others stick with the old name S. nigrum.And, of course, plenty of seed catalogs simply offer garden huckleberry with no botanical name whatsoever.
So, what’s a gardener to do?
My thought is that, if you find garden huckleberry offered in a legitimate seed catalog, it’s at least bound to be edible—seed companies whose customers die of poisoning seldom last long!—, whatever species might really be hiding behind the name.
So, don’t hesitate to grow garden huckleberries, but only harvest ripe berries. And do cook them before you make that delicious (best of luck with that!) huckleberry pie!
I know much of this Garden Huckleberry as it leaves are cooked and eaten in Africa . In Southern Cameroons aka Ambazonia it’s called ‘Njama-njama,’ in Kenya it’s called ‘Managu’.
It’s the same S. Nigrum as described by Wiki.
I have been growing garden huckleberries for over 40 years and eating huckleberry pie and other treats made with them. They make delicious jams. The trick in enjoying the garden huckleberry is to not harvest them until after the first frost in the fall. Then boiling the large black ones until tender. Then drain off the water. It isn’t the sugar that makes them taste good it is the acid that is added. You can either add a tablespoon of vinegar or 3 tablespoons of lemon juice to a 2 Qt saucepan. I personally like to add 2 tablespoons of lemon juice and a teaspoon of vinegar. It results in the best flavor. Once this treatment is used then you can use them in any berry recipe as you would any berry. These berries should never be eaten raw. So, they do not need any more sugar than the wild hucklberries do.
Thanks for this important article. I recently purchased “huckleberries” from a local farm share stand. I was excited to get them home, because I had sampled wild huckleberries in Wyoming last summer & absolutely loved them. This information helped me understand why these beautiful berries tasted so bitter and left a bad taste in my mouth. I bought the tomato – Solanum – variety, not the blueberry relative – Vaccinium or Gaylussacia. Latin Nomenclature is still really important!
Needless to say, I’m not going to add a ton of sugar to make them edible so tossing them. I don’t want them to funk up my compost pile either. No beuno!
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There is still little written or documented about the garden huckleberry and whether it is safe to eat. I got a small plant from a propagator at a plant exchange and it grew huge with a plethora of berries. After 4 months I decided to harvest a small amount of berries because in Northern Colorado the first frost isn’t far away since it is now the beginning of October. Berries were hard to remove and the plant is still flowering so I wondered if they were fully ripe. I had enough to make a pint of jam using 3/4 Cup of sugar and a tsp. of fruit pectin. It is a glorious purple and tastes great, unlike other types of berries. And I’m not sick or dead!
Glad to hear you’re still alive!
Okay, when I was studying the pokeweed when it first moved into our region, I found that it ‘can’ be edible if harvested early enough and cooked enough, and just enough of the right parts were eaten, but not the wrong parts and so on. You know, I just want to eat it. I don’t want to think about it. I just decided that there are less risky things to eat. I found the same when studying the hyacinth bean, and I really feel the same way about these wonderberries or garden huckleberries. I’m just going to leave them alone.
Solanum nigrum is known in the UK as deadly nightshade, but also as ‘Belladonna’. Which, translated from the Italian, means ‘beautiful woman’. in tudor times (perhaps even before, and for a while after) women used to squeeze the juice of a ripe berry into their eyes, because it gave a pearlescent sparkle to the white of the eyes, rendering the woman’s look more alluring… unfortunately, it also eventually made them blind. A clear-cut case of ‘children., don’t try this at home’ if ever there was one – !
Solanum nigrum is a totally different plant and species than deadly nightshade which is “Belladonna”. The Solanum species, (also called nightshade) are edible, the Belladonna (also called deadly nightshade) are toxic, used medicinally in minute amounts, but are deadly if consumed in larger amounts.
Solanum nigrum is known in the UK as deadly nightshade, but also as ‘Belladonna’. Which, translated form the Italian, means ‘beautiful woman’. in tudor times (perhaps even before, and for a while after) women used to squeeze the juice of a ripe berry into their eyes, because it gave a pearlescent sparkle to the white of the eyes, rendering the woman’s look more alluring… unfortunately, it also eventually made them blind. A clear-cut case of ‘children., don’t try this at home’ if ever there was one – !
In North America, belladonna is a different Solanaceae species: Atropa belladonna. It is also called deadly nightshade.
We grow and eat Schwartzbeeren each year, and they look just like your last photo. Why do we grow them? Because my Mother-in-law made the best pies with them, and they are a real treat to my husband. 🙂
Obviously, the efforts my sister and I put into cooking them in an Easy-Bake oven were quite paltry. I for one would really love to try huckleberry pie some day…. but it’s not something I see in bakeries, even when I travel.