Plants of South Eastern New South Wales

Solanum campanulatum

Flower and leaves. Photographer Ian McMaster, east of Mudgee

Fruit and leafy stem. Australian Plant Image Index, photographer Murray Fagg, Australian National Botanic Gardens, Canberra, ACT.

Common name

A nightshade

Family

Solanaceae

Where found

Forest. Coast, ranges, and the eastern edge of the tablelands, north from Wollongong.

Notes

Short-lived shrub to 1 m high. Prickles abundant on all parts except the petals. Fruit fleshy. Hairy with stellate and simple glandular hairs. Leaves alternating up the stems, mostly 8–13 cm long, 50–90 mm wide, stellate-hairy (needs a hand lens or a macro app on your phone/tablet to see), margins lobed. Upper flowers sometimes male. Flowers lavender-purple, 14–20 mm in diameter, with a deeply bell-shaped tube and 5 lobes. Flowers in 4–10-flowered clusters. Flowering: throughout the year. Fruit green at first, yellow at maturity, drying brown to black, half enclosed in the calyx, 20–25 mm in diameter.

PlantNET description:  http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Solanum~campanulatum (accessed 7 February, 2021)