Educational information, not medical advice — ask your doctor or midwife.
Black nightshade leaf is the cooked green leaf of the plant Solanum nigrum. Yoruba cooks call the leaf odu, and the dish made from it is efo odu. It is eaten as a vegetable and also used in home remedies.
The plant has a real hazard, so read this part first. The unripe green berries and the raw leaves hold solanine-type alkaloids, which are natural poisons. Cooks boil the leaves and pour the water away to cut these down.
As a cooked vegetable, odu is an ordinary food with ordinary food value. As a medicine, the human evidence is very thin. Long use in a tradition is not proof that something works, and it is not proof that it is safe.
Most of what is known comes from the lab bench, not from people.
The leaf holds alkaloids called glycoalkaloids. In test tubes these damage cell membranes.
In animals, large amounts upset the gut and the nervous system. That is the toxic side, and it is well described.
Some lab work points the other way. In cell studies, extracts of the plant show antioxidant activity.
In rats given liver poisons, extracts have reduced liver damage markers. In diabetic rats, extracts have lowered blood sugar.
None of this has been confirmed in people. A result in a rat or a dish is a starting point, not a proven human effect.
The food value is simpler and better established. Cooked dark leafy greens supply vitamin A precursors, vitamin C, iron and calcium. Eating them adds to your daily intake of those nutrients.
You will meet it in these forms:
- Fresh leaf bundles sold in African and Caribbean markets - Frozen or tinned cooked greens - Dried leaf and leaf powder
- Capsules or tinctures of leaf or whole-plant extract, sold online - Pounded raw leaf juice, used in some folk practice - Ripe black berries, eaten in a few regions
The cooked leaf is the form with the longest food record. Raw leaf juice and unripe berries are the forms tied to poisoning reports.
Extracts in capsules have no agreed strength. One brand can differ a lot from another.
Odu has been grown and eaten across West Africa for generations. In Yoruba cooking it was boiled, drained and served in stews, often with other greens. Market sellers treated it as a staple vegetable, not a rare herb.
Healers in the region used the cooked leaf for stomach complaints and general weakness. Crushed leaf was laid on boils and skin sores. The plant held a place in household care rather than in formal medicine.
Similar plants were used far beyond West Africa. In East Africa the greens are known as managu or ndunda. In India, makoi appears in Ayurvedic writing for liver and skin complaints.
These records describe what people did. They do not tell us what the plant does in the body.
Stop eating or taking it and get urgent medical help if you have:
- Repeated vomiting or severe stomach pain. - Confusion, strong drowsiness or blurred vision. - A fast or pounding heartbeat. - Trouble breathing, muscle twitching or a fit.
Take a child to emergency care at once if they have eaten the green berries, even if they seem well. Bring a piece of the plant with you so staff can identify it.
See your doctor before using it as a remedy if you take any regular medicine, or if you have liver, kidney, heart or blood sugar problems.
In Nigeria, Ghana and much of East Africa the leaf is an ordinary market vegetable. In the UK, EU and United States it is not approved as a medicine. Capsules and extracts sold there are supplements, and their strength and purity are not checked before sale.
Evidence grades and traditional-use labels are explained in our methodology. Nothing here is medical advice.
What it is typically used for, usual dose, cautions, and the study behind it where real trial data exists.
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