High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Solanum bulbocastanum (ornamental nightshade) is a plant in the Solanaceae family, native to Mexico and parts of the U.S. Southwest. It is closely related to the potato and, as it has evolved strong resistance to all known varieties of potato blight, has been used to genetically engineer resistance into the cultivated varieties of potatoes around the world. The use of genetic engineering is necessary as efforts to hybridize by traditional methods have so far been unsuccessful.