LXIII. SOLANACEÆ.
Trees, shrubs or herbs, with colorless juice and rank smelling foliage, alternate rarely opposite leaves, without stipules, and perfect regular yellow, white or purple flowers on ebracteolate pedicels in usually dichotomous cymes; calyx campanulate, usually 5-lobed, the lobes slightly imbricated or valvate, usually persistent; corolla gamopetalous, usually 5, rarely 4-lobed, the lobes induplicate-valvate or plicate in the bud; stamens inserted on the tube of the corolla and alternate with and as many as its lobes, equal or unequal; filaments filiform or dilated at base; anthers 2-celled, introrse, opening by apical or longitudinal slits, disk pulvinate or annular, entire, sinuate or 2-lobed or 0; ovary sessile or stipitate on the disk, 2 or rarely 3—5-celled; style slender, terminating in a small or more or less dilated stigma; ovules numerous, attached in many series on the axile placenta, rarely few or solitary, anatropous or slightly amphitropous. Fruit baccate or capsular. Seeds numerous; testa membranaceous or crustaceous; embryo usually slender and curved in fleshy albumen; cotyledons semiterete, shorter than the radicle turned toward the hilum.
A family of 83 genera widely distributed in tropical and temperate regions; often producing fruit with narcotic or poisonous properties, and containing among its useful members the Potato and the Tomato.