1. SOLANUM L.
Herbs, shrubs or rarely trees. Leaves alternate, lobed or pinnatifid, persistent or deciduous. Flowers in mostly lateral, extra-axillary or axillary clusters; calyx and corolla 5, rarely 4—10-parted, the calyx persistent under the fruit, corolla rotate in the bud; stamens 5, rarely 4—6, exserted; filaments short; anthers oblong or acuminate, rarely ovoid, converging round the style, opening at apex by two pores; disk not conspicuous, or annular; ovary usually 2, rarely 3 or 4-celled; style simple; stigma usually small; ovules numerous. Fruit baccate, often surrounded by the enlarged calyx, usually globose and juicy; seeds compressed, orbicular or subreniform.
Solanum with some 1200 species is widely distributed through the tropics, with a few species extending into cooler regions, the larger number of species occurring in the New World.
The name is of uncertain derivation.
1. [Solanum verbascifolium] L.
Leaves ovate to elliptic or oblong, acute or acuminate at apex, rounded or cuneate at base, entire, thickly coated when they unfold with hoary tomentum, and at maturity thin, yellow-green and stellate-pubescent on the upper surface, paler and more densely stellate-pubescent on the lower surface, 5′—7′ long and 1′—3′ wide, with slightly undulate margins, a prominent midrib and slender primary veins; persistent; petioles slender, densely stellate-pubescent, ¾′—1′ in length. Flowers appearing throughout the year on pedicels ¼′ long and much thickened at maturity, in broad many-flowered dichotomous stellate-pubescent cymes on peduncles 1′—4′ in length from the axils of upper leaves; calyx about ½′ long, densely stellate, the lobes triangular-ovate; corolla about ¾′—1′ wide after the expansion of the oblong-ovate lobes; stamens exserted. Fruit globose, yellow, ½′—¾′ in diameter, surrounded at base by the densely stellate calyx, with ovate acute lobes about ⅙′ long; seeds nearly orbicular to obovoid, much compressed, yellow, 1/12′ in diameter.
A tree, rarely 20° high, with a trunk 4′ or 5′ in diameter, spreading branches forming a flat-topped head, and stout unarmed branchlets densely stellate-tomentose during their first season, becoming glabrous and light orange-brown or gray-brown in the following year; usually smaller and generally a shrub. Bark of the trunk thin, close, much roughened by many wart-like excrescences, light greenish or yellowish gray.
Florida, rich hummocks, Merritt’s Island on the east coast, southward to the shores of Bay Biscayne, and to the Cape Sable region; on the Bahama Islands, and many of the Antilles, in Mexico and Central America, in the tropics of the Old World and in southeastern China; now thoroughly established but more probably introduced than indigenous in Florida.