Mostly armed shrubs to 1.5 m tall, pubescent overall with stalked stellate hairs; older stems with copious, dark or yellowish, stout, broad-based, mostly curved prickles 2-10 mm long. Leaves solitary or in somewhat unequal pairs, ovate, 7-18 cm long, 3-12 cm wide, apically acute or slightly acuminate, basally truncate or obtuse, often dimidiate, mostly 4-lobed on each side, the lobes ascending, often salient and acuminate, above with scattered, sessile, stellate hairs, often glabrescent, beneath softly tomentose with dense, whitish, short-stalked hairs, often drying discolorous, the lateral veins ascending at 45 degrees, branched on each side as they enter the lobes; petiole 2-7 cm long. Inflorescences extra-axillary, many-flowered cymes; peduncle commonly 1-3-branched, 1- 3 cm long, yellowish tomentose with stalked stellate hairs; pedicel 4-8 mm, tomentose. Flowers with calyx 3-5 mm long, tomentose, the lobes narrow, ca. 1 mm long before splitting to become 2.5-3 mm long; corolla blue or purple, rotate, 1.5-1.8 cm long; filaments 0.5 mm long; anthers narrow, 4-6 mm long; ovary apex and base of style with short simple and stellate, sometimes glandular hairs. Berry yellow, 5-8 mm across; fruiting pedicel erect, 1-1.5 cm long, tomentose; fruiting calyx tomentose, not enlarged; seeds buff colored, discoid, 2 mm across.

KAOHSHIUNG: Shoushan, D’Arcy 19274. PINGTUNG: Kueitzuchiao, Hengchun peninsula, Chuang 1053. TAITUNG: Chinshuiying, Yang 23750.

Found in Ceylon, southern China, the Phillipine Islands, and Taiwan. In Taiwan on raised coral hills of the southwestern plains.

This species is quite similar to Solanum peikuoense, which has longer calyx lobes, glabrescent pedicels, and is less pubescent overall. Solanum macaonense is restricted to lowland sites, below 500 m, while S. peikuoense occurs above 1,000 m elevation.