The potato is a starchy tuber of the plant Solanum tuberosum and is a root vegetable native to the Americas. The plant is a perennial in the nightshade family Solanaceae.
Solanum is a large and diverse genus of flowering plants, which include three food crops of high economic importance: the potato, the tomato and the eggplant. It also contains the nightshades and horse nettles, as well as numerous plants cultivated for their ornamental flowers and fruit.
Solanum carolinense, the Carolina horsenettle, is not a true nettle, but a member of the Solanaceae, or nightshade family. It is a perennial herbaceous plant, native to the southeastern United States. The plant is invasive throughout much of temperate North America, as well as parts of Europe, Asia, and Australia. The stem and undersides of larger leaf veins are covered with prickles.
Solanum dulcamara is a species of vine in the genus Solanum of the family Solanaceae. Common names include bittersweet, bittersweet nightshade, bitter nightshade, blue bindweed, Amara Dulcis, climbing nightshade, fellenwort, felonwood, poisonberry, poisonflower, scarlet berry, snakeberry, trailing bittersweet, trailing nightshade, violet bloom, and woody nightshade.
Solanum viarum, the tropical soda apple, is a perennial shrub native to Brazil and Argentina with a prickly stem and prickly leaves. The fruit is golf-ball-sized with the coloration of a watermelon. It is considered an invasive species in the lower eastern coastal states of the United States and recently on the Mid North Coast of Australia.
Solanum mauritianum is a small tree or shrub native to South America, including Northern Argentina, Southern Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. Its common names include earleaf nightshade, woolly nightshade, flannel weed, bugweed, tobacco weed, tobacco bush, wild tobacco and kerosene plant.
Solanum aviculare, commonly called poroporo, kangaroo apple, pam plum (Australia), or New Zealand nightshade, is a soft-wooded shrub native to New Zealand and the east coast of Australia. Other names used for Solanum aviculare in the Māori language include pōporo, hōreto, and peoi.
Solanum pseudocapsicum is a nightshade species with mildly poisonous fruit. It is commonly known as the Jerusalem cherry, Madeira winter cherry, or, ambiguously, "winter cherry". These perennials can be grown decoratively as house plants, but in some areas of South Africa, India, Australia and New Zealand it is regarded as a weed.
Solanum quitoense, known as naranjilla in Ecuador, Costa Rica, and Panama and as lulo in Colombia, is a tropical perennial plant from northwestern South America. The specific name for this species of nightshade means "from Quito."
Solanum aculeastrum is commonly known as soda apple, sodaapple nightshade, goat apple, poison apple, or more ambiguously as "bitter-apple". It is a poisonous nightshade species from Africa and not related to true apples. The term "soda apple" probably derives from "Sodom apple", modified due to the fruit's detergent properties.
Solanum aethiopicum, the bitter tomato, Ethiopian eggplant, or nakati, is a fruiting plant of the genus Solanum mainly found in Asia and Tropical Africa. It is also known as Ethiopian nightshade, garden eggs, and mock tomato. It is a popular vegetable in north-east India, and is known as khamen akhaba in Manipuri and samṭawk in Mizo. They are called Titay bii or simply bii in Darjeeling, Sikkim and Nepal and are relished with meat, particularly pork. These names are a result of its varied morphology, with ripe fruit often looking like a cross between an eggplant and a tomato, which are also from Solanum. In fact, the Ethiopian eggplant was so much confused with the ordinary eggplant that this was considered by some a variety violaceum of S. aethiopicum.
Solanum americanum, commonly known as American black nightshade, small-flowered nightshade or glossy nightshade is a herbaceous flowering plant of wide though uncertain native range. The certain native range encompasses the tropics and subtropics of the Americas, Melanesia, New Guinea, and Australia.
Solanum mammosum is commonly known as nipplefruit, fox head, cow's udder, or apple of Sodom, is an inedible Pan-American tropical fruit. The plant is grown for ornamental purposes, in part because of the distal end of the fruit's resemblance to a human breast, while the proximal end looks like a cow's udder. It is an annual in the family Solanaceae, and part of the genus Solanum, making the plant a relative of the eggplant, tomato, and potato. This poisonous fruit is native to South America, but has been naturalized in Southern Mexico, Greater Antilles, Central America, and the Caribbean. The plant adapts well to most soils, but thrives in moist, loamy soil.
Solanum elaeagnifolium, the silverleaf nightshade or silver-leaved nightshade, is a common native plant to parts of the southwestern USA, and sometimes weed of western North America and also found in South America. Other common names include prairie berry, silverleaf nettle, white horsenettle or silver nightshade. In South Africa it is known as silver-leaf bitter-apple or satansbos. More ambiguous names include "bull-nettle", "horsenettle" and the Spanish "trompillo". The plant is also endemic to the Middle East.
Solanum xanti, known commonly as chaparral nightshade, purple nightshade, and San Diego nightshade, is a member of the genus Solanum. It is native to the Western United States in Arizona, California, Nevada, and Oregon, and to northwest Mexico in Baja California.
Solanum sisymbriifolium is commonly known as vila-vila, sticky nightshade, red buffalo-bur, the fire-and-ice plant, litchi tomato, or Morelle de Balbis.
Solanum bahamense, commonly known as the Bahama nightshade, is a plant in the nightshade family. It is native across the West Indies, from the Florida Keys east to Dominica. It is a common species in coastal habitats, often on calcareous soils.
Solanum lanceolatum, with the common names orangeberry nightshade and lanceleaf nightshade, is a species of nightshade. It is native to regions of South America, including the Cerrado ecoregion of the Tropical and subtropical grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biome, primarily in Brazil.
Solanum physalifolium, known as hoe nightshade, Argentine nightshade, green nightshade and hairy nightshade, is a species in the family Solanaceae. Native to Argentina, Bolivia and Chile, it is widely naturalized in Australia, New Zealand, Europe, western Canada and the north western United States. Solanum physalifolium has been widely but incorrectly known as Solanum sarrachoides, a different species. It has been listed as a noxious weed in the US states of Kansas and Michigan under this misapplied name.
Melicope adscendens is a rare species of flowering plant in the citrus family known by the common name auwahi melicope. It is endemic to Hawaii, where it is known only from the island of Maui. It is a federally listed endangered species of the United States. Like other Hawaiian Melicope, this species is known as alani.
