Order 74. SOLANÀCEÆ. (Nightshade Family.)
Herbs (or rarely shrubs), with colorless juice and alternate leaves, regular 5-merous and 5-androus flowers, on bractless pedicels; the corolla imbricate or valvate in the bud, and mostly plaited; the fruit a 2-celled (rarely 3–5-celled) many-seeded capsule or berry.—Seeds campylotropous or amphitropous. Embryo mostly slender and curved in fleshy albumen. Calyx usually persistent. Stamens mostly equal, inserted on the corolla. Style and stigma single. Placentæ in the axis, often projecting far into the cells. (Foliage rank-scented, and with the fruits mostly narcotic, often very poisonous, while some are edible.)—A large family in the tropics, but very few indigenous in our district. It shades off into Scrophulariaceæ, from which the plaited regular corolla and 5 equal stamens generally distinguish it.
[*] Corolla wheel-shaped, 5-parted or 5-lobed; the lobes valvate and their margins usually turned inward in the bud. Anthers connivent. Fruit a berry.
1. Solanum. Anthers opening by pores or chinks at the tip.
[*][*] Corolla various, not wheel-shaped, nor valvate in the bud. Anthers separate.
[+] Fruit a berry, closely invested by an herbaceous (not angled) calyx.
2. Chamæsaracha. Corolla plicate, 5-angulate. Pedicels solitary, recurved in fruit.
[+][+] Fruit a berry, enclosed in the bladdery-inflated calyx. Corolla widely expanding.
3. Physalis. Calyx 5-cleft. Corolla 5-lobed or nearly entire. Berry juicy, 2-celled.
4. Nicandra. Calyx 5-parted. Corolla nearly entire. Berry dry, 3–5-celled.