PlantFiles: Woody Nightshade, Climbing Nightshade, Bittersweet
Solanum dulcamara

Anyone growing this plant needs to cut off the fruit before the birds eat it, as daistuff does, or they will spread it.

Just to set the record straight, the Bittersweet vine mentioned below as being invasive and choking plants, as well as banned in New Hampshire, is the Oriental Bittersweet, Celastrus orbiculatus, introduced in the 1800's. It is NOT American Bittersweet, Celastrus scandens, a native plant that is fine to grow, and is even listed as "exploitably vulnerable" in NY.

I guess I got lucky that this came up right next to our deck, in the shade in front of a trellis that I was looking to cover. It doesn't seem to spread too quickly, but I do cut off and discard all the berries, and I aggressively trim all the long pieces that hang off the trellis. Wind the rest around and it looks very pretty! I was just starting to wonder if there was any vine that would grow in the shade under the deck, when this popped up. Grows in shade and sun. I guess I wouldn't plant it intentionally, but I've taken an "if you can't beat em join em" approach to it, and we are living in harmony (so far).

If you know what you're doing and are diligent in your gardening habits, this plant can be an absolute joy and wonderful to look at. Planted in a dry area, it is much easier to control instead of it controlling you.
Poisonous to pets and young children, pets actually avoid it, and children should be watched around it as they put everything into their mouths, but they would not appreciate the taste, so it's doubtful they would injest enough to actually make them ill.
In my garden, they are planted along a short expance of wire fencing installed specially to support the vines as a backdrop for a bed of various lillies and hostas. They do not have strangling vines as do the native true bittersweet vine, which is in a totally different family. That being the case, it's easy to control by cutting back where it's not appreciated or pulling up young plants that self-seed where not wanted.
What I like most about the Solanum Dulcamara, other than it's small tomatoe-like fruit and deep purple, yellow stamened flowers blooming at the same time to create a colourful display is the fact that it attracts innumerable bumble bees and is virtually pest-free. Finches use it for cover, and birds do eat the ripe fruit.
Grown as I have it, in full sun in sandy, well-watered soil, the thick mass of greenery provides a much-needed habitat for the shade-loving hostas and sedums that grow beneath.
One person reported skin eruptions from touching the leaves, etc., but that sounds more like she was pulling out poison ivy rather than woody nightshade. Another mentions it strangling other plants. Again, that sounds more like the common bittersweet that has been banned from being sold by nurseries here in N.H. because if its intrusive, distructive nature rather than the woody nightshade.
Simply, I love it.

What an ugly mess of tangled, dead stems woven through our chain-link fence! We inherited this rambunctious plant, and I took an immediate dislike, since it was out of control. We dug it up last spring, and this spring we are still pulling thousands of seedlings, as it self-seeds all over creation.

This certainly is a nasty and invasive weed. I've had it pop up in our unused gravel parking place, year after year. It will choke out nearly any other plantings as the others here have said. I try to stay mostly organic in my garden, but I did have to resort to chemicals for this monster. RoundUp didn't do the job for me. I used a product by Ortho that was labeled to kill Poison Ivy and Blackberries. It is a slow-kill process, but it kills everything it touches (nasty, nasty stuff).

Please don't think you can control this stuff, it's on a mission to take over the world! If you do decide to keep it please at least keep it from going to seed so that your neighbors don't have to deal with it.

I once thought this plant was tolerable because of it's pretty deep purple flowers and red berries. I moved in to a new home in spring with a lovely natural pond and stream and was discovering this plant along the banks and some in the woods. Each plant got bigger throughout the summer and was entangling all sorts of natural plants with huge clumps of en snarling, thick vines.

They grow well from very dry soil to hydro phonically. They spread even faster in the water and were gumming up the stream and pond as any part of the vine would propagate roots if it touched watery soil.

I've tried for a year now to pull them out. They are poisonous (and smelly not in a good way) and I gotten a rash once when for a couple of hours I was trying to remove them with water soaked gloves.

If you want to pull them out find the anchor root (where the vine stems are leading to in the ground) and pull it up and let it dry. The whole plant attached to this will wilt. This saves a lot of time as there usually a lot of the vine attached to one root clump.

If you live in North America or other areas where it is not native don't plant it, it is very aggressive and particularly dangerous to our wetlands.

This plant is a notable homeopathic remedy that is not commonly used, due to the skill required in dosing.
I found it growing under a hemlock tree in my yard this year.

The alkaloid Solanine asks as a narcotic and in large doses paralyzes the central nervous system without affecting peripheral nerves and muscles. An overdose will surely kill you.

This is not a plant anyone should desire. It is a weed! It is invasive, destructive, indestructible, and chokes out any desired plants. A single brush against my skin caused a rash that flared up within an hour and lasted for weeks(and I was wearing gloves!). I pull it whenever I see it, and can never seem to fully eradicated it.

This plant was all over our landscape when we bought our house a year and a half ago. We didn't know what it was and our toddler picked the berries - luckily we got them out of his mouth before he swallowed any! DO NOT PLANT THIS if you have young children or children that visit. I am still finding it in our yard even though I pull up every plant I see.

Gardeners in North America either love bittersweet vines or hate them. Bittersweet plants can kill trees and are difficult to eradicate from your landscape. But during the fall season bittersweet vines put on a display few other plants can rival. To grow bittersweet vines or not to grow bittersweet vines: truly a bittersweet decision for landscapers.

This plant has many names, here are a few...Bittersweet, Bittersweet Herb, Bittersweet Stems, Bittersweet Twigs, Blue Nightshade, Felonwort, Fever Twig, Garden Nightshade, Nightshade, Nightshade Vine, Scarlet Berry, Staff Vine, Violet Bloom, Woody, Woody Nightshade, and Climbing Nightshade.

The standared form of this plant is very pretty. This plant is an unusually vigorous easy striking vine packed with puckered leaves widely margined with deep green and blue-violet potato like flower clusters become berries ripening to yellow,orange.green, red, then darker. Handsome deciduous vine scarce in commerce due to its weedy nature. This plant is hardy to Zone 4, & it can also be grown as a houseplant.

A plant introduced into the U.S. from Europe, called "bittersweet nightshade" (Solanum dulcamara). The berries of this plant undergo an interesting color transformation during their growing season. Beginning as a green berry, they change first to yellow, then to orange, and finally to red. Making the plant even more colorful is the fact that not all the berries reach these color stages at the same time. Consequently, it is not uncommon to see a bittersweet nightshade plant bearing berries of three different colors. The berry of this true bittersweet is poisonous. Not that I'd recommend that the novice ingest false bittersweet berries.

The flowers are pretty, and the berries look nice too, but it's much too invasive. I hate the way it will wrap itself all over a
tree(or anything else it can manage to climb on), and wind it's tendrils over everything - makes tearing it
out quite a chore.

Eurasian in origin. In the midwestern Region of the US, this plant has become extremely invasive. Appears these same characteristics are associated with this plant south of us here too. It has naturalized. Listed as noxious in a few states. All parts of this plant are poisonous to people, horses, pigs, horses, and pets which is why the plant is sometimes called Deadly Nightshade. The toxin this plant contains is called solanine.

If you want to remove it, dig it out and pick up all pieces of the plant as it has been my experience that any piece of the plant left on the ground is capable of resprouting. Special. I had a few areas of this where I actually broke down and used Round Up on it. Wear gloves when working with this plant or you might end up with a nasty rash.