Plants of South Eastern New South Wales
Solanum pungetium
Common name
Eastern nightshade, Jagged nightshade
Family
Solanaceae
Where found
Forest, disturbed sites, and along streams. Coast and ranges.
Notes
Annual or short-lived perennial herb or shrub to 1.5 m high, sprawling. Prickles to 10 mm long, often purplish black, sparsely scattered on stems, leaves, leaf stalks, flower stalks, and calyces. Fruit fleshy. Stems stellate-hairy (needs a hand lens or a macro app on your phone/tablet to see). Leaves alternating up the stems, 3–8 cm long, 20–40 mm wide, lobed, the lobes bluntly triangular; upper surface dark green and sparsely stellate hairy, lower surface paler and more densely stellate hairy. Flowers mauve to purple, 15–20 mm in diameter, with a short tube and 5 spreading lobes, to bell-shaped with 5 lobes, in clusters of 1–3 flowers. Flowering: chiefly spring–autumn. Fruit marbled green turning yellow when ripe, round, 25–30 mm in diameter, base enclosed in the prickly calyx.
PlantNET description: http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Solanum~pungetium (accessed 7 February, 2021)
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