Hi, Hans!

At 03:29 PM 3/22/03 +0100, you wrote:

><snip>
>Eggplants are actually not nightshades, they have been associated with
>nightshades by mistake (given the part of their name "solanum").
>They are relatives to squash, cucumber and melons. And they are not of
>american origin.


I had not heard this before, so I did a Google search to see what I could
find.  So far, all the professional botanists place eggplant in the
nightshade family.  I also searched for eggplant and cucurbit to see if I
could find a reference to eggplants being in this family.  So far, nothing
like that.  What source are you quoting here?

I would like to look into this more because in a post a couple of days ago,
I gave a link to a page that gives some natural toxins in plant foods.  One
of the statements it makes is that the nightshades all contain nicotine,
and after tobacco, eggplant has the highest amount.  This makes sense if
eggplant is a nightshade, but seems way out of line if it is actually a
cucurbit/melon.  Also, one of the pages on the Net describes grafting
tomato vines onto eggplant roots to keep the tomatoes alive in flood
conditions.  This really makes it seem reasonable that eggplants are
nightshades, rather than cucurbits.  The confusion may come about because
of their name:  S. melongena.  I have found nothing yet to support that it
refers to "melon."   I think it may refer to "long," as melongena is a word
used to describe certain gastropods also.

I did come across the information that eggplants are native to tropical SE
Asia.

I'm looking forward to getting clarity on this.

Jane
Southern Arizona