Eggplant or Potato: how to tell them apart?
Eggplant and Potato look alike and are often mixed up. Here is how to tell them apart, feature by feature, with their photos and the details to look for.
⚡ The quick answer
Eggplant
Solanum melongena
Potato
Solanum tuberosum
The violet star-shaped flowers with a centre of yellow stamens look very alike in aubergine and in purple-flowered potato varieties — the same floral architecture as in all cultivated Solanaceae. It is the foliage (entire and downy in aubergine, deeply cut in potato) and above all the fruit that tell them apart unambiguously.
🍃 Leaves
Large, ovate, slightly downy, sometimes spiny on the midrib
Compound, pinnate, dark green, characteristic smell when crushed
🌸 Flowers
Violet, with 5 petals fused into a star
White, pink or purple depending on variety, with 5 petals fused into a star
🍎 Fruits
Large elongated or ovate berry, dark violet to glossy black (sometimes white or striped depending on the variety)
Small green berry, toxic, rarely formed in cultivation
🪵 Bark
Sturdy herbaceous stem, sometimes slightly spiny
Angular herbaceous stem; the tubers eaten form on underground stems
📏 Size
50 cm to 1 m tall
50 to 80 cm tall
🗺️ Habitat
Grown in vegetable gardens, under cover or outdoors in warm climates
Grown in vegetable gardens and as a field crop
⚠️ Toxicity
The ripe fruit is edible. The green parts contain glycoalkaloids and are not meant to be eaten in large quantities.
Tuber edible once cooked; the green parts (leaves, stems, berries, greened or sprouted tubers) contain solanine, which is toxic
🔎 And from the Potato side
The purple star-shaped flowers with a centre of yellow stamens look very similar in the aubergine and in potato varieties with purple flowers — the same floral architecture as in all cultivated Solanaceae. It is the foliage (entire and downy in the aubergine, deeply divided in the potato) and above all the fruit that tell them apart unambiguously.
🌿 Go further
Want to practise spotting these details on real photos? Floraneo offers profiles and quizzes for dozens of look-alike species.
ℹ️ Educational profile — do not use it to judge whether a plant is edible or safe.