Flora of the Hawaiian Islands
Dicotyledon Literature for Solanum nelsonii
Wagner et al., 1990, 1999.
   Solanaceae -- The Nightshade Family Bibliography
      Solanum nelsonii

Common name(s): nightshade, tomato, `akia (Ni`ihau), popolo
General Information
DistributionIn the Hawaiian Islands, endemic to Kure, Midway, Pearl and Hermes, Laysan, Ni`ihau, Kaua`i, O`ahu, Moloka`i, Maui, Hawai`i.
















Click here for detailed USGS map by Jonathan Price
Habit
Sprawling or trailing shrubs up to 1 m tall, forming clumps up to 1.5 m in diameter, unarmed, young stems and leaves densely pubescent with stellate hairs.
Leaves
Leaves grayish green, entire, alternate, broadly ovate to orbicular, often 3-4 cm long, 2.5-3 cm wide, margins entire, occasionally with shallow rounded lobes (juvenile phase?), apex rounded or acute, base rounded to cordate, often oblique, petioles 0.5-1.2 cm long.
Flowers
Flowers perfect, actinomorphic, in racemose cymes occasionally divided from an upper internodal position, peduncles up to 5 cm long, pedicels ca. 10 mm long; calyx deeply divided, the lobes sometimes unequal, triangular, 4-5 mm long, including calyx tube of 2 mm long; corolla white, tinged with lavender to pale purple, stellate, the lobes ca. 12 mm long, apex acute; stamens inserted on corolla tube; filaments ca. 1.5 mm long, flattened below; anthers yellow, flushed purple, or purple, sigmoid, ca. 4 mm long, opening by apical pores; ovary bluntly conical, ca. 2 mm long, densely pubescent above; style 1, erect, ca. 5 mm long, densely pubescent in lower part; stigma apical, shortly 2-lobed.
Fruit
Berries 1-4 in clusters, usually black when mature (2 reports of red from Nihoa), globose, ca. 1 cm in diameter, pedicels and calyx not much enlarged.
Seeds
Seeds numerous, flattened, subreniform, 3-4 mm long, minutely reticulate.
Chromosomes
2n = 24*