Solanum dulcamara
Climbing Nightshade
This magick herb is associated with Saturn and Mercury, since it is considered balancing.  It is protective (especially when hung in a secret place to protect the home), heals from bitter memories, and helps in Fae magick.  This perennial climber likes watery places, such as riverbanks, and borders, like the edge of the woods or fences.  It can get up to 12 feet long and flowers through summer.  The berries are poisonous when unripe (green), but only mildly poisonous when ripe (red). This herb is nowhere near as dangerous as deadly nightshade, but children should never eat these berries at any stage, because they are more sensitive to alkaloids.  Birds find the berries tasty, though, and perhaps that's why this herb is also considered an Air plant.  The Delaware, Iroquois, Micmac, and Nootka Indians used bittersweet as a poultice to treat arthritis (interesting considering that nightshades are often thought to aggravate this condition), skin ailments, digestive complaints, and tumors.  Juice from the crushed twigs was used externally to treat bruises and skin diseases.  In Eclectic medicine, the root was made into a poultice for illness that manifested itself on the skin.  Bittersweet has been cultivated since the mid 1500s, mostly because of its dapper looks. It is also known as Climbing Nightshade, Bittersweet, Woody Nightshade, Felonwood, Felonwort, Scarlet Berry, and Violet Bloom. I harvested these seeds right here in upstate New York. Top. 

How to grow: I have found this plant to be very easy to grow.  You can stratify or not. If you stratify these seeds, soak in cold water you change daily for fresh cold water for two weeks.  Then sow in Jiffy 7 as usual. Otherwise, just sow them under normal conditions where the temperature fluctuates between day and night, and they will sprout within 21 days.  Grow in sun or partial shade in good soil. They like something to clamber over, although they do not have tendrils, so you have to kind of help them. I have them growing over the iron railing of my front porch. They will also climb up shrubs without smothering them. Their red berries and purple flowers look nice poking out of small evergreens. General growing info Top

Uses in Witchcraft & Magick:

Protection Spells
Balancing
Heals Bitter Memories
Fae Magick
Mercury/Saturn Herb

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