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.
LXIV. BIGNONIACEÆ.
Trees or shrubs, with watery juice, and opposite or rarely alternate simple (in the arborescent genera of the United States) leaves, without stipules. Flowers perfect, large and showy; calyx closed in the bud, bilabiately splitting in anthesis; corolla hypogynous, 2-lipped, 5-lobed, the lobes imbricated in the bud; stamens 2 or 4, inserted on the corolla, introrse; anthers 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally; staminodia 1 or 3; ovary sessile, 1 or 2-celled, gradually narrowed into a slender simple style 2-lobed and stigmatic at apex; ovules numerous, horizontal, anatropous; raphe ventral; micropyle superior. Fruit a linear woody loculicidally 2-valved capsule, or a berry. Seeds without albumen; embryo filling the cavity of the seed.