Solanum marginatum L.f.
white-edged nightshade
Branched medium-sized to large shrub, occasionally almost a small tree, to c. 5 m tall; most parts densely white-stellate-tomentose; prickles yellow, to 1.5 cm long. Petioles to c. 4 cm long, prickly. Lvs to c. 25 × 18 cm, usually less on reproductive shoots, broadly ovate or elliptic-ovate, sinuately lobed, finally glabrate or glabrous and dark green above except for whitish tomentose margin, persistently white-stellate-tomentose beneath; midrib and veins prickly, the prickles to > 1 cm long on veins above; base usually deeply cordate with sinus obscured by basal lobes; apex rounded. Cymes few-flowered, white-stellate-tomentose and prickly; peduncles to 4 cm long; pedicels pendent at fruiting. Calyx 9-14 mm long, accrescent; lobes lanceolate-ovate. Corolla 2.5-3.5 cm diam., white, sometimes with purplish veins; lobes broadly triangular-ovate, stellate-tomentose outside. Anthers 6-8 mm long. Berry 2-6 cm diam., globose or subglobose, yellow; stone cells 0. Seeds 3-4 mm diam., broad-ovoid to broad-obovoid.
N.: widespread, sometimes common; S.: locally common in Nelson, occasional in coastal areas as far S. as Banks Peninsula and Otago Harbour.
Probably N.E. Africa 1883
Depleted pastures, poor rough country, forest margins, plantations, gullies, roadsides, waste places, scrub.
FL Nov-Mar.
White-edged nightshade soon became fully naturalised after escaping from cultivation and its propensity to form dense prickly thickets in pastures makes it a most undesirable sp. Attempts have been made to eradicate it and it is less common now than in the first half of this century. It is a very distinctive sp. easily identified by the prickly lvs with prominent chalky white undersurfaces and margins. It is still occasionally grown as an ornamental.
