Solanaceae

Abstract

Shrubs or perennial to annual herbs, rarely trees, rosette-forming or ephemerals, sometimes with tuberous or gemmiferous roots, or with tubers or stolons; stems occasionally with heteroblastic growth or with cauline spines; plants glabrous, frequently viscose or slightly or densely wooly-tomentose, with a diverse array of non-glandular and glandular trichomes. Leaves alternate, often in pairs, sometimes becoming opposite in the inflorescence, usually simple, entire, infrequently pinnatifid to deeply dissected or compound, exstipulate. Flowers perfect, rarely functionally unisexual in dioecious or andromonoecious plants, sessile to mostly pedicellate, fragrant or not, solitary or more commonly in axillary, extra-axillary, or terminal multi-flowered lax panicles, cymes or fascicles. Perianth (4)5(6)-merous; calyx actinomorphic, rarely zygomorphic, undivided or slightly to much divided, usually persistent and variously accrescent; corolla actinomorphic or zygomorphic, rotate, stellate, tubular, infundibuliform or hypocrateriform, exceptionally papilionaceous, tube glabrous or hairy inside, lobes longer or shorter than the tube, similar or dissimilar in size, aestivation valvate, valvate-induplicate, valvate-plicate, valvate-conduplicate, valvate-supervolute, cochlear, cochlear-conduplicate, cochlear-plicate, contorted-induplicate, contorted-conduplicate, contorted-plicate, quincuncial, or reciprocative; androecium included or exserted, 5-merous, 6-merous (Goetzea), 4-merous (then stamens equal in Nothocestrum, otherwise didynamous: 4 fertile or 2 fertile stamens and 2 staminodes; sometimes also with a fifth staminode) or with 2 fertile mobile stamens in lateral or dorsal position and 3 staminodes with vestigial or sometimes without anthers, filaments straight or declinate, inserted at different heights on the corolla tube, distinct or connate in a basal ring fused to the corolla, filament base appendages adnate to petal tube (“stapet”) absent, inconspicuous or conspicuous (with or generally without basal auricles), anthers dorsifixed, basifixed, dorsi-basifixed, or ventrifixed, extrorse, introrse or latrorse, frequently connivent (in Solanum sect. Lycopersicon with sterile apices and joined in a column), thecae generally non confluent apically, equal or unequal, dehiscence longitudinal or by terminal pores or slits, connective inconspicuous, wide, forming a dorsal layer of uniform and slight thickness, or thick with an emerging hump; gynoecium with oblique orientation (except Nicandra), usually bicarpellate, 3–5-carpellate in Jaborosa, Nicandra, Trianaea, and up to 30-carpellate in Nolana, ovary generally bilocular, sometimes 4-locular due to false septa, superior or sometimes partly inferior, glabrous or with trichomes or prickles; style heteromorphic or homomorphic, straight or declinate, terminal or subterminal, stigma variously shaped, usually wet and papillate (papillae rarely lacking); nectary absent, cryptic, or evident, then annular, invaginated or with 2 prominent lobes. Fruit generally a many-seeded berry or a septifragal, septicidal or septicidal-loculicidal capsule, rarely a pyxidium, drupe, diclesium or schizocarp. Seeds 1 to ca. 5000, compressed, then discoid, lenticular, reniform, irregularly ovoid or not compressed, then generally angular, cuboidal, ovoid, prismatic, polyhedric, subspherical, reniform; embryo straight to coiled, U-shaped only in Duckeodendron, cotyledons incumbent or oblique, less frequently accumbent, usually equal, slightly longer or shorter (up to 12 times shorter in the Australian endemic genera) and as wide or rarely broader than rest of embryo; endosperm rarely absent, generally copious, storing mainly oil and starch, with cellular type of endosperm formation (nuclear only in Schizanthus).

Hunziger (deceased).

Fuentes (deceased).