NIGHTSHADE FAMILY. 



Waste ground, commonly in shade op in moist places, flowering 

 through the summer into early winter. Plants from the south 

 (Monterey to Southern California) have corollas 5 lines wide. 



S. villosum Lam., a villous-hirsute annual of the Old World with 

 minute white corollas and green berries, was collected at West 

 Berkeley, 1891, by Greene. S. TUBEROSUM L., the Common 

 Potato, with leaves pinnate and large and minute leaflets intermixed, 

 is occasionally found beyond the boundaries of cultivated fields 

 (Howell Mountain). 



2. S. Xanti Gray. Stems herbaceous, several to many from .-, 

 perennial base, erect or decumbent, mostly simple, slender and 

 sparsely leaved, H to 2 ft. long; pubescence somewhat viscid and of 

 simple hairs; leaves thinnish, elliptic-ovate, at base obtuse, truncate 

 or subcordate, on petioles 5 lines long or less; flowers few in an umbel 

 or cyme, light azure or fading darker blue, 5 or (> lines in diameter. 



High mountain ridges near Vacaville; common in Southern Cali- 

 fornia (the flowers a full inch in diameter); occasionally collected in 

 the Sierra Nevada at middle elevations. Mar. -May. 



3. S. umbelliferum Esch. More or les> suffrutescent, 2 to 3 

 ft. high, the stems deep green, mostly 5-angled or -ridged; finely 

 pubescent-tomentose, the hairs branched; leaves elliptic-ovate, 1 to 2 

 in. long or less, thickish, on petioles 2 to 3 lines long; flowers in 

 umbels; peduncles short or almost none; the pedicels 4 to 8 line- 

 long; calyx 5-lobed, corolla blue, sometimes white, 10 lines broad, 

 shallowly 5-lobed with 5 pairs of greenish glands near the base: 

 anthers 2 lines long, the filaments merely evident; berry when fully 

 ripe, dull white with a greenish tone toward the base. 4 to 8 lines in 

 diameter. 



Hill country of the Coast Ranges, especially along gulches or in 

 canons toward the coast (apparently not in inner Coast Ranges); 

 Sierra Foothills. Flowering all the year. The notes which follow 

 were derived from plants at Berkeley. Pedicels and calyx often 

 purplish. Calyx-lobes variable in their degree of union. Umbels 

 on lateral branchlets which are often borne on the upper portion of 

 long sterile shoots of the preceding year. The terminal umbels soon 

 become lateral by the development of the branch in the axil of the 

 first leaf below the inflorescence. Branches soon naked by the early 

 fall of the leaves, the joint just above the base of the petiole marked 

 by a faint transverse purple band; persistent leaf-base conspicuous; 

 some of the leaves rarely 2 or 8-lobed at base or pinnatifid. 



Greene has a S. cupulifkrum (Erythea, iii. 12) from Marin and 

 Napa Cos., distinguished by its depressed habit, papillose-scabrous 

 herbage, short simple pustulate hairs, pedicels 1 in. long and flat 

 rotate corolla not wavy by the elevation of the middle of each lobe 

 as in S. umbelliferum. 



