Colorado Plants Injurious to Livlstock 
59 
hence the common name ‘hhree-flowered nightshade.” The fruit is 
greenish, and about inch in diameter. The plant grows throughout 
the state from low altitudes up to 10,000 feet. 
Poisoning by nightshades (Solannms). —The nightshade family is 
a large one and contains important medicinal plants and several import¬ 
ant food plants. Many plants of the group have poisonous properties. 
Neither the black nor three-flowered nightshade are known to poison 
stock extensively. Bittersweet, sandbur, horse nettle, bull nettle and 
the common potato all contain poisonous properties. A large number 
of plants of this group contain the alkaloid solanin, and nightshade also 
has a bitter principle dulcamarin and two nijore alkaloids solanidin and 
solanein. The tops and sprouts of the common potato are poisonous 
when green. The tubers are poisonous when they have turned green 
from exposure to the sun. Hogs have been poisoned by eating raw 
potatoes that were wilted and beginning to rot; cases are reported 
every fall in the potato district in which horses and cattle have been 
poisoned from eating potatoes left in the fields after harvest. In one 
instance an entire herd O'f hogs developed paralytic symptoms after 
feeding for some time upon a ration consisting almost entirely of raw 
potatoes that were more or less withered and sprouting. The black 
Fig. 85.—Sand bur, buffalo bur (Solanum rostratum). 
