BITTERSWEET NIGHTSHADE JUNGLES

      Bittersweet nightshade jungles have many beauties, and shelter several kinds of wildlife through summer.  This common vine spreads rapidly across the ground and climbs trees, shrubbery and other objects, particularly near streams where the soil is constantly moist.  It can tolerate partial shade.  

     This kind of nightshade is originally from Eurasia, but is now naturalized in much of the United States.  It is a perennial plant, spreading every spring from its root system in the sheltering ground.  All parts of these interesting plants are poisonous to people and livestock, though nightshade is related to tomatoes, peppers and egg plants.

     Nightshade vines sprout early in May, and have several beautiful flowers by early June. Each attractive blossom has five reflexed, deep-purple petals and yellow stamens that come together to a point, making a striking combination of purple and yellow colors.  

     At any one time through summer, nightshade vines have flower buds, blooms, green berries, yellow berries, orange berries and, finally, red berries, all of which create intriguing, multi-colored beauties.  Nightshade berries follow the same sequence of color change as ripening tomatoes.

     Bittersweet nightshade berries, when red-ripe, are ingested by starlings, American robins, gray catbirds and other kinds of berry-eating birds.  Those birds digest the juicy pulp of each berry, and pass the seeds in their droppings as they travel around, spreading nightshade vines across the countryside.  

     We have a tangle of bittersweet nightshade climbing a small clump of volunteer rose-of-Sharon bushes mingled with a few dead, four-foot pussy willow stubs on our back lawn.  I saw several kinds of invertebrates in that jungle of nightshade one afternoon this June, including a few each of Colorado potato beetles, lady-bug beetles looking for aphids, Japanese beetles, worker bumble bees sipping nectar from the lovely blooms, and collecting pollen in pollen baskets on two of their legs.  And there were a few tiny, iridescent long-legged flies looking to prey on tiny invertebrates, and a few nymphs of black, white-spotted, spotted lantern flies.        

     Sometimes, a few each of house sparrows and house finches settled in that tangle of nightshade to eat invertebrates, adding more beauty and interest to those vines.  And I think a pair of gray catbirds were raising young in that sheltering nightshade jungle, judging from their worried, anxious actions when I got too close to suit them.

     Life is amazingly resilient and bounces back, if given a chance to do so.  Bittersweet nightshade is one of those adaptable species that does well among our destructive activities, when it is left alone.

     

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