Bitter smelling plant invasion
Sorry I don't have means to send a picture at the moment, but a nasty smelling plant, looking a bit like a solanum, but with a rapidly spreading rhizome that look a bit like a Jerusalem Artichoke is cropping up all over my vegetable garden.
It is getting rather scary since it is appearing in my cut salad and other places. 
I have traced the patch to an old, abandoned barn yard, where it is spreading amongst the moss and brambles, covering several meters. It has tiny flowers and little clusters of bright green berries, that are very small, and are obviously being spread to my garden by birds. The leaves are lancolate-oval with pointed tips and slight serration - and these are the source of the nasty, bitter smell. The rhizome is forming a complex matt, each node bit being a little smaller than a Jerusalem Artichoke, but looking very similar.
Does any cleaver person know what these are please, and are they poisonous?
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Sounds like a nightshade. No, not a Deadly Nightshade - you are unlikely to encounter one of those, it's rare.
Thank you for that Welshonion.
I'm glad it isn't the Deadly Nightshade, I will look through the family online and see if I can find it. I live in a sheep farming area, so I had better identify it and at least alert the shepherds not to let the sheep into my vegetable patch if it is poisonous! 
Even if it's not, he might he might keep them off if you hint at dns
Solanum dulcamara?
Yes, a bonus indeed. Sheep are far worse than woolly aphids in my vegetable garden!
From looking online, the plant may be a "Hairy Nightshade" (all these hair and wool things are making me sneeze) or perhaps"American Nightshade" - but it is not that easy to tell from the pictures online, and it says that the specie are very variable. No sources a mention the artichoke-like roots that seem a most distinctive feature.
Last edited: 14 October 2017 14:03:01
Hello Onopordum, I've just looked at the Solanum dulcamara, but it says it has a climbing habit which these do not, and the berries aren’t nearly that big, are round and don't go red. It's habit is more like a nettle, straight upright stems in a big clump.
Thank you anyway, I will keep looking - it is hard to describe things well first time when you don't have a camera working 
but I will know it when/if I see it - by process of elimination probably. So far, the Hairy Nightshade looks most similar. I suppose it could be a hybrid of two different kinds, especially since the Solanums seem to have been adapted for so many different purposes over thousands of years. A new hybrid or sub-species would be interesting - though not so welcome in with my vegetables.