Plants of South Eastern New South Wales
Solanum linnaeanum
Common name
Apple of Sodom
Family
Solanaceae
Where found
Dry forest, woodland, grassy areas, disturbed sites, coastal environs, and creeklines. Coast and ranges north from Jervis Bay. Rarely elsewhere.
Notes
Introduced shrub to 2 m high. Prickles 3-15 mm long, yellowish, straight, abundant on stems, leaf stalks, both leaf surfaces, flower stalks, and calyces. Stems hairy with stellate hairs (needs a hand lens or a macro app on your phone/tablet to see) and some glandular hairs, green or purplish when young, turning brown or greyish and becoming woody with age. Leaves alternating up the stems, 2.5-15 cm long, 15–80 mm wide, upper surface sparsely stellate hairy, lower surface more densely stellate hairy, leaves usually deeply lobed, the lobes rounded to more or less triangular, margins wavy or further lobed. The upper flowers in each cluster often male, the lower flowers bisexual. Flowers purple to pale purple-blue, sometimes almost white, 15–35 mm in diameter, broadly tubular with 5 lobes, to star-shaped or pentagonal, in 3–6-flowered clusters. Flowers throughout the year. Fruit green with paler green or whitish mottling when young, yellow when mature, finally brown or black and wrinkled as they age, round, 20–35 mm in diameter.
Noxious weed Vic.
PlantNET description: http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Solanum~linnaeanum (accessed 7 February, 2021)
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