Plants of South Eastern New South Wales
Solanum mauritianum
Common name
Tobacco bush, Wild tobacco bush, Wild tobacco tree, Wild tobacco
Family
Solanaceae
Where found
Rainforest and wet forest, woodland, roadsides, and gullies and other moist sites. Coast and ranges. Albury district. Doubtfully naturalised in the ACT.
Notes
Introduced shrub or small tree to 4 m high. Fruit fleshy. Stems green or grey-green, densely stellate hairy (needs a hand lens or a macro app on your phone/tablet to see), sometimes sticky, hairs loose and tufted on young growth. Older stems moderately to sparsely hairy, greyish-brown and somewhat woody. Leaves usually with a strong odour when rubbed or when wet, alternating up the stems, 7.5-40 cm long, 30–150 mm wide, upper surface green and sparsely hairy, lower surface densely grey stellate hairy, margins entire to slightly wavy, tips gradually tapering to a point. One or two small stalkless leaves in the axils except on smaller twigs. Flowers violet, purple, blue, mauve, or whitish, 15–25 mm in diameter, star-shaped with 5 lobes, in 25-100 flowered clusters. Fruit dull yellow, globular, hairy, becoming hairless with age, 10–15 mm in diameter. Flowers autumn–spring.
General Biosecurity Duty all NSW.
PlantNET description: http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Solanum~mauritianum (accessed 7 February, 2021)
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