SOLANACEJE 377 



XXXVI. SOLANACE^. Nightshade Family. 

 Herbs or shrubs, with alternate often compound leaves: flowers 

 perfect and regular, 5-merous, mostly rotate or open-bell-shaped 

 in form and plaited in the bud: stamens 5, often connivent around 

 the single 2-loculed pistil, borne on the corolla: fruit a berry or 

 capsule (the latter sometimes 4-Ioculed by a false partition^ the 

 seeds borne on a central column. Some 70 genera and 1,500 species. 

 Common representatives are nighshade, potato, tomato, husk tomato, 

 tobacco, jimson-weed, petunia. 



A. Fruit a fleshy berry. 



B. Fruiting calyx bladdery-inflated and wholly enclosing 

 the fruit: anthers not connected, opening length- 

 wise 1. Physalis 



BB. Fruiting calyx not inflated. 



c. Stamens with anthers equaling or exceeding the 

 filaments. 

 D. Anthers separate or barely connected, open- 

 ing at the top 2. Solan um 



DD. Anthers united, opening lengthwise 3. Lycopersicnm 



cc. Stamens withanthersmuchshorterthan filaments. 4. Capsicum 

 AA. Fruit a capsule. 



B. Calyx 5-parted to near base 5. Petunia 



BB. Calyx toothed, not deep-parted. 



c. Pod usually prickly, large 6. Datura 



cc. Pods not prickly, small 7. Nicotiana 



1. PHtSALIS. Ground Cherry. 



Herbs, flowering through the summer: flowers solitary, nodding on 

 axillary peduncles: leaves alternate or often somewhat paired, margins 

 entire or sinuate: calyx enlarging after flowering, and finally enclosing the 

 pulpy berry as a much-inflated papery sac: corolla yellowish or white, often 

 with dark center, wheel-shaped, with short tube, the border obscurely 5- 

 lobed, plaited in bud. 



P. Virginid,na, Mill. Perennial by rootstocks, viscid: fruiting calyx 

 pyramidal, closed, more or less 5-angled and indented at base: berry reddish 

 yellow, edible, not filling the loosely inflated calyx: corolla yellow, nearly 

 an inch in diameter, with brown center, and edge 5- to 10-angled: anthers 

 yellow. Open places, in rich soil. Summer. 



P. pub^scens. Linn. Low annual, more or less pubescent and clammy: 

 stem generally difl'use in branching, 9-18 in. tall, often somewhat swollen at 

 nodes: corolla small, about J^ in. across, yellow or greenish, with a dark, 

 spotted center: anthers purple: the green or yellow berry does not fill the 

 closed, 5-angled calyx. In low or damp places. 



