Minnesotans Should NOT Eat This Strange ‘Fruit’ If They Find It!

We've entered into peak gardening season, as I seem to be 'harvesting' tomatoes and cucumbers regularly in our planters. If you are growing potatoes this year, you may have noticed something odd growing along with your tubers. Potato plants can produce a 'fruit', but you shouldn't eat it as it is really poisonous!

Your potato plants may have flowered this year with a cooler and wetter spring, creating what looks like small cherry tomato fruits growing on the above-ground portion of your potato plants.

potatoes produce fruit
byu/Azigufthecommunist ingardening

I found this picture and thread on Reddit.

The thread is from two years ago when someone noticed these 'berries' seemingly growing on their potato plants. The user, who was unsure what they were, decided to crowdsource their answer.

The Michigan State University Extension Office has more on the 'fruit'.

These potato fruit are not edible. More precisely, they are poisonous. They contain high amounts of solanine that can make the eater very ill. Solanine is also found in potatoes that are dug, left in the sun and the skin turns green. Besides being very bitter, eating plant parts containing solanine can lead to headache, abdominal pain, shock and diarrhea. If little kids are around, the fruit should be removed so the children are not tempted to eat them.

If you saved the ripe seeds inside the potato fruit, you would not get the same kind of potatoes as the parent plant. It would take several years to even grow these to a size that you could harvest. The only people saving and planting potato seeds are growers and breeders who are hoping to produce a new variety of potato.

The good news is due to some cooler weather, that caused your potato fruit, it shouldn't hurt your underground potatoes.

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I hope this helps!