野茄 ye qie

Solanum cumingii Dunal.

Herbs or subshrubs, erect, 0.5(-2) m tall, pubescent with stellate hairs, usually armed. Stems and branches shaggy tomentose with stalked many-rayed hairs, glabrescent, sparingly armed with mostly straight needlelike prickles. Leaves unequal paired; petiole 1-4 cm; leaf blade ovate or elliptic, 5-12(-14.5) × 4-7 cm, tomentose with stalked and sessile, many-rayed hairs, with short stout prickles on veins, base obtuse or truncate, oblique, margin 5(-7)-sinuate lobed, apex acute or obtuse. Inflorescences extra-axillary, few-flowered scorpioid racemes, ca. 2.5 cm; peduncle very short. Flowers andromonoecious. Pedicel 0.5-2 cm. Calyx campanulate, 6-9 mm × 1-1.5 cm; lobes deltate-lanceolate, ca. 5 × 2 mm, densely stellate hairy. Corolla purple-blue or white, stellate-rotate, 1.5-2 × 1.5-3 cm; lobes broadly deltate or ovate, ca. 10 × 5 mm, with stellate hairs abaxially. Filaments 1.5-1.8 mm, glabrous; anthers elliptic, 5-8 mm. Style 5-6 mm, glabrous. Fruiting pedicel 2.5-5 cm, deflexed, sparsely stellate hairy, prickly; fruiting calyx persistent, slightly enlarged, hairy, prickly. Berry yellow, globose, 2-3 cm in diam., glabrous. Seeds lenticular, 2-3 mm in diam. Fl. Mar-Jul, fr. May-Dec.

Thickets, slopes; 200-1100 m. Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, Hainan, Taiwan, Yunnan [Afghanistan, NW India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Thailand, Vietnam; Africa, SW Asia]

Material of this species was identified in FRPS as Solanum coagulans Forsskål, a species from eastern Africa and Arabia which has unequal anthers. The name S. incanum Linnaeus has commonly been used for this species, but recent neotypification of that name calls for applying it to a species from northeast Africa and the Arabian Peninsula that has more pubescent leaves with narrower apices and smaller fruits. The application of S. undatum or S. cumingii to this species is uncertain.