SOLANACE.E 867 



with tine hoary deciduous pubescence, and light orange color, becoming in their second yeai 

 more or less contorted, light or dark gray, conspicuously marked by the interpetiolar lines 

 and by horizontal leaf-scars displaying a central row of fibro- vascular bundle-scars; usually 

 not more than 20-30 tall, with a short slender stem, and toward the northern limit of its 

 range a low shrub. Bark of the trunk \'-\' thick, roughened with thin irregularly ap- 

 pressed dark brown scales tinged with red, and in falling displaying the bright orange-red 

 inner bark. Wood very heavy, hard, rather coarse-grained, with numerous medullary rays 

 and eccentric layers of annual growth, dark brown or nearly black, with thick brown sap- 

 wood. 



Distribution. Florida, St. Augustine to the southern keys on the east coast, and from 

 Cedar Keys to Cape Sable on the west coast; on some of the islands in Mississippi Sound, 

 and on the shore of Terrebonne and Cameron Parishes, and on most of their islands, Louisi* 

 ana; on the Bahama Islands, on many of the Antilles, and southward to Brazil; and on thd 

 west coast of Africa; in the United States of its largest size in Florida just north of Cape 

 Sable; north of Matanzas Inlet on the east coast of Florida usually with stems only a fetf 

 feet tall. 



LXIH. SOLANACE^E. 



Trees, shrubs or herbs, with colorless juice and rank smelling foliage, alternate rarely op- 

 posite leaves, without stipules, and perfect regular yellow, white or purple flowers on ebrac- 

 teolate pedicels in usually dichotomous cymes; calyx campanulate, usually 5-lobed, the 

 lobes slightly imbricated or valvate, usually persistent; corolla gamopetalous, usually 5, 

 rarely 4-lobed, the lobes induplicate- valvate or plicate in the bud; stamens inserted on the 

 tube of the corolla and alternate with and as many as its lobes, equal or unequal; filaments 

 filiform or dilated at base; anthers 2-celled, introrse, opening by apical or longitudinal slits, 

 disk pulvinate or annular, entire, sinuate or 2-lobed or 0; ovary sessile or stipitate on the 

 disk, 2 or rarely 3-5-celled; style slender, terminating in a small or more or less dilated 

 stigma; ovules numerous, attached in many series on the axile placenta, rarely few or soli- 

 tary, anatropous or slightly amphitropous. Fruit baccate or capsular. Seeds numerous; 

 testa membranaceous or crustaceous; embryo usually slender and curved in fieshy albu- 

 men; cotyledons semiterete, shorter than the radicle turned toward the hilum. 



A family of 83 genera widely distributed in tropical and temperate regions; often 

 producing fruit with narcotic or poisonous properties, and containing among its useful 

 members the Potato and the Tomato. 



1. SOLANUM L. 



Herbs, shrubs or rarely trees. Leaves alternate, lobed or pinnatifid, persistent or de- 

 ciduous. Flowers in mostly lateral, extra-axillary or axillary clusters; calyx and corolla 5, 

 rarely 4-10-parted, the calyx persistent under the fruit, corolla rotate in the bud; stamens 

 5, rarely 4-6, exserted; filaments short; anthers oblong or acuminate, rarely ovoid, con- 

 verging round the style, opening at apex by two pores; disk not conspicuous, or annular; 

 ovary usually 2, rarely 3 or 4-celled; style simple; stigma usually small; ovules numerous. 

 Fruit baccate, often surrounded by the enlarged calyx, usually globose and juicy; seeds 

 compressed, orbicular or subreniform. 



Solanum with some 1200 species is widely distributed through the tropics, with a few 

 species extending into cooler regions, the larger number of species occurring in the New 

 World. 



The name is of uncertain derivation. 



1. Solanum verbascifolium L. 



Leaves ovate to elliptic or oblong, acute or acuminate at apex, rounded or cuneate at 

 base, entire, thickly coated when they unfold with hoary tomentum, and at maturity thin, 

 yellow-green and stellate-pubescent on the upper surface, paler and more densely stellate- 

 pubescent on the lower surface, 5 '-7' long and l'-3' wide, with slightly undulate margins, 



