刺苞茄 ci bao qie

Herbs or subshrubs, erect, ca. 1 m tall, armed with straight prickles, pubescent with stellate hairs. Stems and branches shaggy-tomentose with stalked, 5-9-rayed stellate hairs and erect, broad-based prickles 2-5 × 1-1.5 mm. Leaves paired; petiole 4.5-6 cm; leaf blade ovate-elliptic to elliptic, 16-24 × 12-19 cm, tomentose with 4-9-rayed hairs, sparsely prickly, base cuneate, margin 10-14-dentate, apex acute. Inflorescences extra-axillary, elongated, many-flowered scorpioid racemes, 5-10 cm; peduncle ca. 2 cm. Pedicel 5-10 mm. Calyx campanulate, 1-1.2 cm; lobes oblong-lanceolate, 8-9 × 3 mm, densely pubescent with pale yellow, stellate hairs. Corolla blue or purple, 1-1.2 × 1.5 cm; lobes lanceolate, ca. 7 × 3 mm, pubescent as on calyx. Filaments less than 1 mm; anthers lanceolate, ca. 7 mm. Ovary glabrous. Style ca. 9 mm. Fruiting calyx with stellate hairs and dense erect prickles, enveloping most of berry. Berry (immature?) globose, glabrous, ca. 1.2 cm in diam. Seeds brownish, discoid, ca. 2.5 mm in diam. Fl. summer.

Waste places, by waters, wet places, valleys, thickets; 500-1300 m. S Yunnan [Bangladesh, India, Laos, Thailand]

We have not seen the type of reliable material of this species, and the record, which follows FRPS, remains uncertain. It is different than any other species known from China, and it resembles S. dasyanthum Thonning of West Africa in many features.