Eggplant is a warm-season vegetable in the nightshade family, a close cousin of tomatoes and potatoes, and it's grown in home gardens across the US. The English name, first recorded in 1763, came from white varieties whose fruit looked like hen's eggs. It's also called aubergine in Britain and brinjal in India and South Africa.
Appearance
- Growth form
- A bushy plant that grows roughly 1½–5 ft (40–150 cm) tall depending on the variety, often with prickly stems. A tropical perennial, it's grown as an annual in the US.
- Leaves
- Large, broad leaves with lobed or wavy edges.
- Flowers
- Star-shaped, white to purple flowers with a cluster of yellow in the center, usually nodding.
- Fruit
- Botanically a berry, with small, soft, edible seeds. The most common varieties are glossy dark purple, but slender Asian types and white, green, and purple-and-white varieties are also grown.
Look-alikes
Horsenettle has sharp prickles on its stems and leaf veins, and its fruits are small, round, tomato-like berries that ripen yellow—never a large purple fruit. All parts are poisonous.
Why they get mixed upIt's a common weed native to the Southeast with white to pale purple flowers and yellow centers that look just like eggplant blossoms.
Where it lives
- Typical habitats
- Vegetable gardens
- Farms
- Range
- Domesticated in Asia, probably twice (in South Asia and East Asia), and grown there since prehistoric times. Europeans brought it to the Americas, and today it's grown in home gardens across the US.
- Preferred conditions
- Loves heat; it does poorly in cold or dry weather.
Growing it
- Care
- Set out transplants about 6 to 10 weeks old in spring after the last frost, once the soil has thoroughly warmed. Harvest roughly 2 to 3 months after transplanting, before the flesh turns tough. Flea beetles and Colorado potato beetles are common pests.
- Toxicity
- The ripe, cooked fruit is a common food, but the leaves and flowers contain and can be toxic in large amounts. Some people report allergy-like symptoms after eating eggplant.
Name and classification
- About the name
- A wild form found in the Philippines and tropical Asia is treated as a subspecies, Solanum melongena cumingii (wild eggplant); some botanists instead treat it as a separate species, Solanum insanum.
Culture and stories
- Culture and stories
- In 13th-century Italian folklore, eating eggplant was said to cause madness.
More species to explore
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