SOLANACEAE (NIGHTSHADE FAMILY) 365 
though the illness caused by eating its ripe fruit is one of exces- 
sive nausea. (Fig. 254.) 
Stem one to two feet high, round, slender, with spreading 
branches, when old often showing a purple tinge at the joints. 
Leaves alternate, long ovate, with slim, grooved petioles, thin, 
dark green, entire or sometimes wavy-edged, often bitten full of 
tiny holes by a small flea-beetle which infests the plant and makes 
it a menace to its relative, the potato. Flowers white, in small, 
umbellate clusters of three to ten on drooping peduncles springing 
from the side of the stem; corolla wheel-shaped, five-lobed, about 
a quarter-inch broad; stamens five, with filaments slightly hairy 
and obtuse anthers united in a cone around the style; calyx- 
lobes much shorter, obtuse, spreading, persistent at the base of 
the berry, which is black, globular, smooth, a little more than 
a quarter-inch in diameter. 
Means of control 
Being annual the plants are readily destroyed by pulling or close 
cutting before the first fruits mature. If near maturity throw the 
plants on the compost heap, where fermentation will destroy the 
vitality of the seed; or burn them. 
HORSE NETTLE 
Solanum carolinénse, L. 
Other English names: Sand Brier, Bull Nettle, Bull Thistle, Apple of 
Sodom, Tread-soft. 
Native. Perennial. Propagates by seeds and by rootstocks. 
Time of bloom: May to September. 
Seed-time: July to November. ; 
Range: Massachusetts, Connecticut, and southern Ontario, to Iowa 
and Kansas, southward to Florida and Texas. ' 
Habitat: Meadows, pastures, and cultivated ground; invades all 
crops. 
A near relative of the potato and one of the worst weeds native to 
this country; southern in its origin but rapidly making its way 
northward and westward through the agencies of impure clover 
seed and baled hay. The deep-seated rootstocks are most tena- 
cious of life; an Indiana farmer states that they “ will live ten years 
