Plants of South Eastern New South Wales

Solanum nodiflorum

Leafy stem with flowers and fruit. Photographer Don Wood, Bomaderry Creek Regional Reserve near Nowra

Leafy stems with flowers and fruit. Photographer Don Wood, north of Milton

Plant. Photographer Jackie Miles

Common name

Glossy nightshade 

Family

Solanaceae

Where found

Weed of forest margins, pastures, gardens, parks, crops, footpaths, roadsides, and disturbed sites. Coast and ranges, occasionally elsewhere.

Notes

Native or intoduced annual or perennial herb or short-lived shrub to 1.3 m or more high. Fruit fleshy. Stems often angled or narrowly winged, hairless or sparsely hairy with simple hairs, sometimes rough, sometimes purplish. Leaves alternating up the stems, 2–14 cm long, 10–80 mm wide, sparsely hairy to almost hairless, margins entire or shallowly lobed or scalloped, tips pointed. Flowers white or pale mauve with a greenish-yellow centre and yellow anthers, 5–9 mm in diameter, star-shaped with 5 lobes. Calyx lobes curved back at the fruiting stage. Flowers in 4–12 flowered clusters. Fruit glossy purple-black to black, globular, 5–9 mm in diameter. Flowers throughout the year

Intermediates between Solanum nigrum and Solanum nodiflorum are sometimes seen.

Solanum americanum in NSW. Regarded as native in PlantNET in most of the area covered by this key, and as introduced on the South Western Slopes.

PlantNET description (as Solanum americanum):  http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Solanum~americanum  (accessed 14 April 2021)