PlantFiles: Potato Vine, Purple Devil
Solanum atropurpureum

This plant has a lot of personality and is a lot of fun to grow. Large purple spines (on stems and leaf ribs) and dark green leaves beautifully offset the bright orange fruit. While this species will set fruit in cool summer areas, depending on the summer, plants may need to be moved indoors to ripen fruit if you wish to collect seeds. The fruits are strictly ornamental and should not be eaten and the juices inside are irritating to the touch so wear gloves when harvesting seeds.

These plants grow quickly and can be grown as an annual in cold winter areas - they'll easily reach 4 ft in one season. This species grows well in containers and plants can also be brought indoors or into a greenhouse to overwinter, just keep it away from pets and children because the spines are very sharp.

Ours is grown in our greenhouse year round where it reached 12 ft by the end of the summer and would have grown taller if it hadn't hit the roof of the greenhouse. Plants also take well to pruning if you need to keep them smaller - just remove the tall, older stems when a new flush of growth is sending up young stems.