Solanum aculeatissimum Jacquin

Herbs to subshrubs, erect, 1-2(-3) m tall, copiously armed, minutely tomentose with simple, many-celled, mostly glandular hairs, often with a pinkish cast. Stems and branches terete, erect, loosely pilose with many-celled, simple and stellate hairs to 2 mm, armed with recurved flat prickles 1-5 × 2-10 mm and sometimes straight spines. Leaves sometimes unequal paired; petiole, stout, 3-7 cm, copiously prickly; leaf blade broadly ovate, 6-15 × 4-15 cm, with coarse, many-celled simple hairs and straight prickles on both surfaces, mixed with sparse, stellate hairs abaxially, base truncate to subhastate, margin 5-7-lobed or -parted, with angular or dentate sharp lobes, apex acute or obtuse. Inflorescences extra-axillary, short, 1-4-flowered scorpioid racemes; peduncle obsolete or to 1 cm. Pedicel 5-10 mm, pilose. Calyx campanulate, ca. 5.5 cm; lobes oblong-lanceolate, 5 × 1.5 mm, hairy and sometimes prickly abaxially. Corolla white; lobes lanceolate, ca. 4 × 14 mm, pubescent as on calyx. Filaments 1-2 mm; anthers lanceolate, acuminate, 6-7 mm. Ovary glabrous or minutely stipitate glandular. Style 6-7 mm. Berry pale yellow, globose, 2-3 cm in diam. Seeds light brown, lenticular, 2-2.8 mm in diam. Fl. Mar-Aug, fr. Nov-Dec.

Tropical and S. North America, widely introduced into Old World Tropics and naturalised.

Fujian (Xiamen Shi), Guangxi, Guizhou, Hunan, Jiangxi, Sichuan, Xizang, Yunnan, Zhejiang (Pingyang Xian) [probably native to Brazil; widespread in tropical Asia and Africa].

1600 m

Along ditches and roads, wastelands, grasslands, thickets, open forests; 600-2300 m.

Solanum cavaleriei H. Léveillé & Vaniot; S. khasianum C. B. Clarke.