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epitome of incomprehensibility
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It hasn't snowed much here - it's raining right now - but it is kind of nice to see the black and red berries growing together along fences.
Now. As to what they're called... the black berries that grow in bunches are edible but rather sour. I used to think they were a kind of grape, but it turns out they're called blackcurrants.
There's another small black berry that grows on tall bushes and not in bunches - there's usually one berry at the end of a twig. I haven't been able to find its name.
The oval-to-teardrop-shaped red berries are called nightshade, according to my mother. They're very pretty, red and luminous and related to tomatoes, but they're poisonous. The confusing part: there's another berry called nightshade, belladonna, which is also poisonous and related to tomatoes, but it looks completely different.
Huh. According to Wikipedia, "nightshade" is an umbrella term for plants of the Solanaceae family, which includes peppers, eggplant, and potatoes as well as tomatoes.
And I found the berry that I'm thinking of (in fact I can see some outside my window right now): its botanical name is Solanum Dulcamara. It isn't as dangerous as the more famous black one (Atropa belladonna), but still somewhat poisonous, so Mom was right. Here's Wikipedia talking about it, though Wikipedia seems to be rather weak on berry knowledge, despite what I learned from it today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solanum_dulcamara
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