Solanum triflorum

CUTLEAF NIGHTSHADE

Common Name: NIGHTSHADE FAMILY
Habit: Annual to shrub. Leaf: generally simple, generally alternate, generally petioled; stipules 0; blade entire to deeply lobed. Inflorescence: various. Flower: generally bisexual; calyx lobes generally 5; corolla generally radial, cylindric to rotate, lobes generally 5; stamens 5, epipetalous, alternate corolla lobes; ovary superior, generally 2-chambered, style 1. Fruit: fleshy or dry berry (drupe) or loculicidal or septicidal (circumscissile) capsule, 2--5-chambered.
Genera In Family: +- 100 genera, 2500 species: worldwide, especially warm latitudes; many alien weeds in California; many cultivated for food, drugs, or ornamental (potato, tomato, peppers, tobacco, petunia). Toxicity: many produce TOXIC alkaloids. Note: Lycopersicon now treated in Solanum, Petunia in Calibrachoa.
eFlora Treatment Author: Michael H. Nee, revised by David J. Keil
Scientific Editor: Bruce G. Baldwin and Thomas J. Rosatti.

Common Name: NIGHTSHADE
Habit: Annual to shrub, vine or not, prickly or not, often glandular. Leaf: alternate to +- opposite, generally petioled, often unequal, generally entire to deeply pinnately lobed or sometimes 1--2 × pinnate. Inflorescence: often from internode, panicle, raceme, or umbel-like, often 1-sided (flowers solitary). Flower: calyx +- bell-shaped in flower, generally deeply lobed; corolla +- rotate, generally radial, white or yellow to purple, lobes often of different color toward base of midrib, sometimes with spots at base; filaments generally << anthers (+- equal to anthers in S. laciniatum), anthers elongated, free, ascending or tightly pressed together, sometimes coherent into a tube, obtuse or tips tapered, opening by 2 pores or short slits near tip, in age often splitting to base; ovary 2-chambered (> 2 in some cultivated forms), stigma knob-like. Fruit: berry, generally spheric, fleshy (or dry, capsule-like), some spp. with +- spheric clumps of stone cells in addition to seeds. Seed: many, flattened, generally reniform.
Etymology: (Latin: quieting, from narcotic properties) Toxicity: many TOXIC. Note: Many cultivated for food (including potato, Solanum tuberosum, tomato, S. lycopersicum, eggplant, S. melanogena), or as ornamentals; Solanum dimidiatum an urban weed extirpated from CA; Solanum peruvianum L. [Lycopersicon peruvianum (L.) Mill.] an historic waif; Solanum sisymbriifolium Lam., with deeply divided, stellate and glandular prickly leaves and sticky red berries, an historic waif.
eFlora Treatment Author: Michael H. Nee, revised by David J. Keil
Unabridged Reference: Bohs 2023 FNANM 14:428--457; Keil 2018 Phytoneuron 2018-61:1--4.