25 
SOLANUM lycioides. 
Lycium-like Solanum. 
——--———-———— 
PENTANDRIA MONOGYNIA. 
Nat. ord. SOLANACE®. (NIGHTSHADES, Vegetable Kingdom, p. 618.) 
SOLANUM.—L. 
Division I. UNARMED: 2. e. without prickles. 
Section 5.  Lycioides, Dunal.— Branches spiny. Leaves solitary, un- 
divided. Peduncles axillary, filiform, one-flowered, solitary or clustered. 
Calyx 5-toothed or 5-cleft. Stamens unequal. Seeds bony. 
S. lycioides ; caule fruticoso, ramis spinescentibus, foliis lanceolatis petiolatis 
glabris nunc subobovatis, pedunculis filiformibus solitariis et aggregatis 
unifloris. | 
S. lycioides, Linn. Mant. p. 45. Jacq. ic. rar. 1. t. 46. Dunal Monogr. 
Sol. p. 174. 
This charming shrub was found by Mr. Hartweg, in the 
valley of San Antonio, in Peru, and flowered in the Garden 
of the Horticultural Society, in Nov. 1845. It has a neat 
habit; the flowers are of the richest sapphire purple, en- 
livened by a bright yellow eye, and in the wild state appear in 
clusters, so as to load the little spiny branches. The name is 
a happy one, for in its natural state (as in No. 1802 of Mr. 
Hartweg's Herbarium), it is very much like a dwarf Lycium 
barbarum. 
In cultivation, however, it loses some of its stiff spiny 
habit, and has hitherto not yielded flowers 1n clusters ; but 
they are larger than in the wild state. 
It is by no means new to Europe, for it was represented 
in Jacguin's Figures of Rare Plants, above sixty years since ; 
but it has disappeared from the gardens of this country. So 
very poor, pale-blue, a variety was indeed at that time pos- 
sessed, that it hardly deserved to be preserved even in a 
botanic garden. 
It is found to be a greenhouse plant, which appears to 
succeed in almost any sort of soil, but to prefer sandy loam, 
