Solanaceae
YASIN J. NASIR
National Herbarium, Pakistan Agricultural Research Council, Islamabad.
Herbs, shrubs or trees. Leaves usually simple and alternate, exstipulate, entire to lobed. Flowers often showy, solitary or in racemes, spikes, panicles, cymes or corymbs, bisexual (unisexual in Withania sp.), regular (± irregular in Nicotiana and Hyoscyamus), ebracteate. Calyx (3-)5 (-7)-lobed, cupular, campanulate or tubular, usually persistent and enlarged in fruit. Corolla rotate, campanulate, salver or trumpet-shaped; lobes 5(-10), usually equal; plicate or valvate in bud. Stamens (4-)5, epipetalous, alternating with the corolla lobes, sometimes didynamous and unequal, attached to the base of the corolla tube or higher up; anthers sometimes adnate to one another and cone-like, dehiscing longitudinally or by apical pores. Ovary superior, oblique, 2-4(-5)-locular; placentation axile. Fruit a many-seeded capsule or berry. Seeds compressed, reniform to discoid, testa smooth or variously ornamented; embryo curved or straight.
A family of c. 84 genera and 3000 species, widely distributed in tropical and temperate regions of both the hemispheres but chiefly W. and Southern S. America. Represented in Pakistan by 14 genera and c. 52 species of which 27 species are native, 6 naturalised and the others exclusively cultivated or found occasionally as escapes.
Additional taxa not seen
Brunfelsia americana L., Sp. Pl. 191.1753; Bailey, Stand. Cyclop. Hort. 1:582. 1919.
A native of S. America. Reportedly cultivated (Price List Catalogue, Gandhi, Gardens, Karachi 1958). A free flowering shrub. The fragrant white flowers fade to yellow with age.
Brunfelsia uniflora (Pohl) D. Don in Edinb. New Philos. J. 1829:29. 1829.
Franciscea uniflora Pohl. Pl. Brasil, l.c. 1:2, f. 1. 1826; Brunfelsia hopeana (Hook. f.) Bentham in DC., Prodr. 10:200. 1846; Bailey, l.c.
A native of tropical S. America. Reportedly cultivated (Price List Catalogue, Gandhi Gardens, p. 146, 1958). A slender shrub with purplish-blue flowers, fading to white.
Cyphomandra betacea (Cav.) Sendtner, Fl. 28:172. 1845; Bailey, Stand. Cyclop. Hort. 2:943. 1919.
A native of Peru. Parker (1918, p. 373) remarks that the ‘tree tomato’ is occasionally planted for ornamental purposes. The egg shaped reddish-brown edible fruit is faintly striped and quite attractive (Bailey, l.c.). Fl. Per.: February-April.
Acknowledgements: we are grateful to the U.S. Department of Agriculture for financing this research under PL-480. Thanks are also due to Dr. C. E. Jarvis (BM) and Mr. F.N. Hepper, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, for information concerning typification and Mr. I. C. Hedge, Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, for going through the manuscript. A British Council Bursary Award for Research abroad, to the author, is gratefully acknowledged.
