Plants of South Eastern New South Wales
Solanum capsicoides
Common name
Devil's Apple
Family
Solanaceae
Where found
Forest margins, disturbed areas in clearings, and along creeklines. Sydney area and Blue Mountains. Rarely elsewhere.
Notes
Introduced annual or short-lived perennial shrub to 1 m high. Prickles yellowish, scattered on most parts. Fruit fleshy, becoming dryish at maturity. Young stems densely hairy, becoming sparsely hairy and slightly sticky. Leaves alternating up the stems, 4-16 cm long, 50-150 mm wide, both surfaces green and sparsely hairy, margins coarsely toothed or shallowly to deeply lobed. Flowers bisexual and male, white, 15–35 mm in diameter, star-shaped with 5 deeply incised lobes. Flowers in 1–5-flowered clusters. Flowering: spring–summer. Fruit bright orange-scarlet, the base enclosed n the prickly calyx, 20–45 mm in diameter.
PlantNET description: http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Solanum~capsicoides (accessed 7 February, 2021)
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