Botanical atlas

Kangaroo Apple

Solanum laciniatum

Kangaroo apple, known as poroporo to Maori, was one of the fastest plants to spring up on cleared or burned ground across Australia and New Zealand, and it earned a reputation as a healer of the land itself long before it drew scientific attention. In the twentieth century its leaves became genuinely important to modern medicine, not as a home remedy but as an industrial source of solasodine, a compound chemists needed to synthesize cortisone and early steroid drugs. For a time New Zealand farmers grew entire fields of it under contract to pharmaceutical companies, a strange and little-known chapter where a wild nightshade helped seed the steroid industry. Traditional peoples treated the plant itself with respect and caution, valuing it more for what it could become in skilled hands than for anything to be eaten straight from the bush.

Safety.

Every part, especially the leaves and unripe green fruit, contains toxic glycoalkaloids that cause nausea, vomiting, and abdominal pain if eaten, with more serious effects possible in larger amounts. Even ripe fruit was only ever eaten in small amounts by those experienced in judging ripeness, so keep it away from children and pets and do not use it as a home remedy.