Plants of South Eastern New South Wales
Solanum elaeagnifolium
Common name
Silver-leaf Nightshade, Silver-leaved Nightshade
Family
Solanaceae
Where found
Weed of pastures, crops and cultivation, roadsides, disturbed sites, and waste areas. Mostly Western Slopes. Rarely elsewhere.
Notes
Introduced perennial herb to 1 m high, often suckering. Prickles 2–5 mm long, reddish, straight, most abundant on stems, less common elsewhere. Fruit fleshy. Stems silvery-green, rarely rusty-green, densely stellate hairy (needs a hand lens or a macro app on your phone/tablet to see). Leaves alternating up the stems, mostly 2.5–10 cm long, 10–30 mm wide, both surfaces densely hairy, silvery-green or rarely rusty-green, the lower leaves shallowly lobed or wavy, the upper leaves entire. Flowers blue, rarely white, pink or purple, 20–30 mm in diameter, broadly tubular with 5 lobes to star-shaped, in 1–4-flowered clusters. Fruit orange-brown when ripe, 8–14 mm in diameter, almost globular. Flowers spring–autumn.
General Biosecurity Duty with additional restrictions all NSW. Noxious weed Vic.
PlantNET description: http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Solanum~elaeagnifolium (accessed 7 February, 2021)
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