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Electronic Flora of South Australia species Fact Sheet

Family: Solanaceae
Solanum rostratum

Citation: Dunal, Hist. nat. Solanum 234, t. 24 (1813).

Synonymy: Not Applicable

Common name: Buffalo burr.

Description:
An annual herb to c. 1 m high, commonly much less, branching freely and flowering when quite young; very prickly on stems, petioles, leaves, peduncles and especially on the calyx, prickles variable in length, to 1 cm long, glabrous, straight, pale or straw-coloured; all parts pubescent with pale stellate hairs and minute simple glandular hairs, general aspect green or grey-green, concolorous; leaves 2-10 x 1-8 cm, variable depending on the stage of growth, ovate or ovate-oblong, deeply lobed or pinnatipartite with 5-7 principal lobes, lamina cut to the midrib between the lower lobes, sinuses rounded, individual lobes almost obovate, with irregular sinuate subcrenate margins; petiole to 5 cm long, continuing as raised decurrent lines down the stem.

Inflorescence a cyme of few to 10 flowers, in an extra-axillary postion; peduncle 2-3 cm long; floral rhachis to 6 cm long; pedicels c. 1 cm long, erect; calyx tube at anthesis 3-4 mm long, lobes 3-5 mm long, subulate, later accrescent; corolla 3-4 cm diam., irregularly rotate, 1 or 2 lobes often longer than the rest, bright-yellow; anthers unequal; 4 anthers 6-8 mm long on filaments 1-2 mm long; 1 anther c. 10 mm long, rostrate, purplish-brown-yellow; style slender, curved, as long as the large anther; stigma unexpanded.

Fruit c. 1 cm diam., globular, enclosed in a very prickly calyx, fruit and calyx ultimately papery and dry; seeds c. 2 mm wide, dark or black, with minute deep pits visible under a lens.

image of FSA3_Solanum_ros.jpg Flowering and fruiting branch and a fruit.
Image source: fig. 578D in Jessop J.P. & Toelken H.R. (Ed.) 1986. Flora of South Australia (4th edn).

Published illustration: Cunningham et al. (1982) Plants of western New South Wales, p. 595; Parsons (1973) Noxious weeds of Victoria, p. 271.

Distribution:  An early introduction and included on the noxious weeds lists of some States but is rarely of importance as a weedy plant in S.Aust.

S.Aust.: EP, NL, MU, SL.   All States except the N.T. and Tas.   Native to southern America and northern Mexico.

Conservation status: naturalised

Flowering time: Jan. — March.


SA Distribution Map based
on current data relating to
specimens held in the
State Herbarium of South Australia

Biology: No text

Author: Not yet available


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