Usually armed herbs or subshrubs to 2 m tall, pubescent with stalked many rayed stellate hairs; prickles mostly flat and straight; stems and branches shaggy tomentose, glabrescent and prickly. Leaves unequal-paired, ovate or elliptic, 5-12(-14) cm long, 4-7 cm wide, apically acute or obtuse, basally obtuse or truncate and often oblique, 5(-7)-sinuate lobed, tomentose on both sides with stalked and sessile, many-rayed hairs, the veins with short stout prickles; petiole 1-4 cm. Inflorescences extra-axillary, few-flowered scorpioid racemes, 2.5 cm long; peduncle very short; pedicel 0.5-2 cm long. Flowers andromonoecious, usually only one flower fertile; calyx campanulate, 1-1.5 cm long, the lobes triangular-lanceolate, 2 mm long, hairy; corolla purple-blue or white, stellate-rotate, 1.5-3 cm long; filaments 1.5-1.8 mm long, glabrous, anthers elliptic, 5-8 mm long. Berry solitary, yellow, globose, 2-3 cm across, glabrous; fruiting pedicel 2.5-5 cm long, deflexed; fruiting calyx slightly enlarged, hairy, prickly; seeds lenticular, 2-3 mm across.

KAOHSIUNG: Shoushan, Yang 183. PINGTUNG: Hengchun, D’Arcy 19280; Wanluan, D’Arcy 19291. TAITUNG: Tungshan, Peng 8917.

Widely distributed in southeast Asia. Taiwan, in disturbed sites.

This species was long known as S. incanum L. That name applies to a different species from northeast Africa and the Arabian Peninsula that has more pubescent leaves with narrower apices and smaller fruits. The application of S. undatum or S. cumingii to this species is uncertain. In some countries, this species occasionally hybridized with cultivated eggplants (S. melongena).