#solanum

The stunning Solanum by @spaces0da whomst their arm I unfortunately mucked up ):

goober below

AKA bittersweet, bitter nightshade, blue bindweed, Amara Dulcis, climbing nightshade, felonwort, fellenwort, felonwood, poisonberry, poisonflower, scarlet berry, snakeberry, trailing bittersweet, trailing nightshade, violet bloom, madness-berry, and woody nightshade.

Native to Eurasia and North Africa, but widely naturalised elsewhere. The seeds are spread by birds like the Eurasian thrush, since they can eat the fruit and not die. The fruit is intensely bitter, which reduces the likelihood of human deaths, but has a sweet aftertaste. Herbalists have certainly noted the effects if people eat them anyway - the monk and scholar Aldhelm of Malmesbury (c. 639-709) described its effects as inflicting a "touch of insanity" upon the user, leaving them "mad with dizziness".

Other parts of the plant have been used in traditional medicine, but since you can develop an allergy that's not recommended either. The flowers are considered a symbol of fidelity in marriage, and used in bridal wreaths and Christian art from the Middle Ages, supposedly because they combine extreme bitterness with surprising sweetness.

Plant of the Day

Sunday 5 July 2026

A half-hardy perennial shrub Solanum muricatum (melon pear, melon shrub, pepino dulce, pepino) requires a long growing season to ripen the fruit properly. In the U.K. a warm glasshouse or polytunnel is ideal where the egg-shaped fruits can be protected from frost.

Or, Quantum Baby Came From Nowhere. Are they a Hearthian or a Nomai? Well, that certainly changes. They have an abnormally few amount of forms for a quantum object, but they live and breathe perfectly happy and healthy in both. So that's a win.

Remix submission for the @outerwilds-events Resonant Echoes Remix, remixing Favorite Moment by @buggbott!

The end of the universe has come, and Solanum is now certain that her journey within it has come to an end. With nothing more to do, she follows a strange signal into the Quantum Moon's polar vortex ... and finds a place – an experience – both familiar and entirely new, holding a few more things for her to identify and explain before whatever remains of her consciousness and will can at last be embraced by oblivion.

This fic presents a sort of connecting sequence, in a way, between Solanum as we last see her on the Quantum Moon and Solanum as we see her in the moment the illustration depicts, full of all sorts of mind-reflecting mind-bending terminal quantum weirdness!

Talk in the Woods My remix for the @outerwilds-events resonant echoes remix!! Original piece is “Solanum’s Vocabulary Lessons” by @theabyssfsh, which you can find here