SOLANUM TORREYI. 

 TORREY'S SOLANUM. 



NATURAL ORDER, SOLANACE.E. 



SoLANUM TORREYI, Gray. — Cinereous with a somewhat close furfuraceous pubescence composed 

 of about equally nine to twelve-rayed hairs: prickles small and subulate, scanty along the 

 stem and midribs, or sometimes nearly wanting: leaves ovate with truncate or slightly 

 cordate base, sinuately five to seven-lobed (tour to six inches long) ; the lobes entire or 

 undulate, obtuse, unarmed: cymes at first terminal, loose, bifid or trifid ; lobes of the 

 calyx (often six) short ovate with a long abrupt acumination. Corolla an inch and a 

 half in diameter; its lobes broadly ovate: berry globose, an inch in diameter, yellow 

 when mature. (Dr. Asa Gray in Synoptical Flora of North America.) 



HIS beautiful species of Solamini has a very brief botan- 

 ical history. It appears to have been met with by 

 Lindheimer in Texas in 1843, "around Houston, the Brazos, etc." 

 and is noted in an account of his collections by Engelmann and 

 Gray in 1845. ^t was then not well understood, and referred 

 doubtfully to an old Linnaian species, a native of the West Indies, 

 named Solaimm mavwiosiuu, and some comparison made be- 

 tween it and the Solaimm Carolinicnsc, the well-known " Horse- 

 Nettle," so troublesome to cultivators in many parts of the Union. 

 Dr. Gray also notes in the " Synopsis " that one described as .S". 

 platyphyllum by Dr. Torrey is to be regarded as this species ; the 

 S. platyphyllum described by Humboldt, Bonpland and Kunth 

 from South America being something else. Torrey's name 

 being therefore appropriated by another, according to botanical 

 rules the plant has to be renamed, and thus we find it now, as 

 given by Dr. Gray, S, Torreyi. This is all that we find noted 

 of it in botanical works. Its geographical history is as brief. 

 Dr. Gray says it grows on " Prairies, etc. — in Kansas and Texas." 

 It is not however in the catalogue of Kansas plants recendy issued 



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