Grafted plants are very vigorous and tolerate diseases affecting the root system, thus allowing the crop to continue for a second year.

The spines are short and slightly curved and vary from thick throughout the plant, including the leaf midrib, to entirely absent.

Turkey berry can be propagated vegetatively by placing branch cuttings, with or without leaves, in a mist chamber for one month (Badola and others 1993).

Several other Solanum species have at one time been included in S. torvum as subspecies or varieties:[3] A number of more or less ambiguous and now-invalid names have been used for S. torvum: Turkey berry apparently is native from Florida and southern Alabama through the West Indies and from Mexico through Central America and South America through Brazil (Little and others 1974).

Turkey berry grows on all types of moist, fertile soil at elevations from near sea level to almost 1,000 m in Puerto Rico (Little and others 1974) and 2,000 m in Papua New Guinea (Pacific Island Ecosystems at Risk 2001).

Turkey berry single plants, groups, and thickets are most frequently seen on roadsides, vacant lots, brushy pastures, recently abandoned farmland, landslides, and river banks.

[5] Aqueous extracts of turkey berry are lethal to mice by depressing the number of erythrocytes, leukocytes and platelets in their blood (Tapia and others 1996).

Extracts of the plant are reported to be useful in the treatment of hyperactivity,[6] colds and cough,[7] pimples, skin diseases, and leprosy.

[8] Methyl caffeate, extracted from the fruit of S. torvum, shows an antidiabetic effect in streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats.

[9] Cholinergic poisoning has been reported as a result of the consumption of Solanum torvum berries prepared in Jamaican dishes.

[15] Turkey berry has been grafted with eggplant in an attempt to incorporate favorable genes for resistance to Verticillium wilt into the vegetable.