Plants of South Eastern New South Wales
Solanum rostratum
Common name
Buffalo Burr, Pincushion Nightshade
Family
Solanaceae
Where found
Crops and waste places, often on floodplains. ACT and Western Slopes, occasionally on the tablelands.
Notes
Introduced annual herb to about 1 m high. Prickles to 10 mm long, abundant on most parts of the plant. Ripe fruit mostly or wholly enclosed by the calyx to form a spiny burr. Stems green or grey-green, hairy with stellate and minute glandular hairs (needs a hand lens or a macro app on your phone/tablet to see). Leaves alternating up the stems, sometimes compound, mostly 2–10 cm long, 10–80 mm wide, deeply lobed, the lower lobes often forming leaflets, surfaces stellate hairy, margins irregularly wavy. Flowers bright yellow, about 25–40 mm in diameter, with a short tube and 5 spreading irregular lobes, 1 or 2 longer than the rest, in few- to 10-flowered clusters. Flowers mostly summer and autumn. Fruit dry when mature, blackish, round, about 10 mm in diameter, skin papery.
General Biosecurity Duty all NSW. Noxious weed Vic.
PlantNET description: http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Solanum~rostratum (accessed 7 February, 2021)
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