328 SOLANACE.E. [Solanum. 



y. Stems much branched, diffuse or prostrate, not scfindent, and, as well as the 

 somewhat fleshy leaves and very angular branches, downy and almost hispid with 

 spreading or partly curved hairs. S. lignosum seu Dulcamara marina, Ray, Syn, 

 ed. Dillen. p. 265 ? 



8. Flowers white. 



Tn mostly damp or wet hedges, woods, groves, thickets and bushy pastures, 

 about old walls, fences and ruins, on river- and ditch-banks and in moist shady 

 places generally ; very common. Fl. June — August. Tj . 



/3. On the Dover, Ryde. Barton copse, near E. Cowes. By the gate leading 

 into the Newport road from Quarr abbey, and elsewhere between Ryde and 

 Wootton. Almost as common a form in the island as a., but variable in the 

 degree of pubescence. 



y. On the sea-beach. 



S. 1 think I have seen this var. on the wet banks of slipped land in Whitecliff 

 bay. In a street at Ryde, Dawson Turner, Esq., in Snooke's Fl. Vect. Sandown 

 bay, and between Calbourne and Brixton, O. Kirkpatrirk, Esq. lu my speci- 

 mens the leaves are all auricled, and the plant scarcely differs from /3. except in 

 not being climbing. 



2. S. nigrum, L. Black or Garden Nightshade. Stem herba- 

 ceous angular without thorns, leaves ovate bluntly sinuato-dentate 

 or wavy, umbels lateral drooping remote from the leaves, berries 

 globular. Sm. E. Fl. i. p. 319. Br. Fl. p. 283. Lind. Syn. p. 

 183. E. B. viii. t. 566. Ourt. FL Lond. fasc. 2, t. 14. 



On waste ground, about houses and farmyards, on dunghills, amongst rubbish 

 and in neglected gardens ; very common. Fl. June — October'. Fr. September, 

 October. 0, or sometimes If, Sm. 



A rank bushy weed, of a dark or blackish green colour. Root annual or some- 

 times perennial. Stem with many spreading angular branches, beset with rough 

 tubercles, which appear to be the rudiments of those thorns or prickles that arm 

 so many foreign species of Solanum. Leaves ovate, stallied, dentato-sinuate, 

 entire at the base and towards the point, slightly hairy in my specimens. Flowers 

 white, in pedunculated drooping umbels, from the upper part of the interramifica- 

 tions of the stem, each flower on a tapering downy pedicel. Ca/ya; -segments 

 ovate-obtuse, those of the corolla lanceolate, downy, as are the filaments and style. 

 Anthers yellow, surrounding the germen like a tube, bursting on the inner face 

 just below their truncate summit. Berries the size of large peas, purplish black, 

 of a sweet mawkish taste, very juicy, 2-celled, with a large fleshy placenta in the 

 middle of the septum, and to which are attached numerous small, whitish, com- 

 pressed seeds, pointed at one end. 



Varieties of this plant with yellow and red berries are found on the Continent, 

 and are considered by some as distinct species. A var. with green berries grows 

 truly wild at Henfield, in Sussex, where it was shown me by Mr. Borrer, who has 

 likewise observed it in Essex. 



The flowers of -S". nigrum, gathered in warm close weather, occasionally exhale 

 an odour of musk as powerfully as those of Mimulus moschatus, which I have 

 myself remarked ; the smell is however very transient, ceasing to be perceptible 

 almost immediately. 



This species in some of its forms is very widely dispersed over the globe, and, 

 notwithstanding its acknowledged poisonous properties, is cultivated in the Mau- 

 ritius and plsewhere as an esculent vegetable (Bojer, Hort. Maurit.), surely not 

 for want of more palatable and wholesome aliment.* 



* See a confirmation of this statement in Lesson's ' Flore Rochfortine,' 8vo, p. 

 353 ; also Sloane, Nat. Hist, of Jamaica, i. p. 235. May not the narcotic prin- 

 ciple be destroyed by boiling, though its activity is not impaired by infusion ? 



