Solanum campechienseL.

redberry nightshade

WFO wfo-0001026782 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 4 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 4 times, so some figures below are different views of the same plant, taken on the same day, rather than different individuals. They are usually different parts of it: the leaf, the flower, the bark.

Solanum campechiense, photographed by Lauren McLaurin
fig. a Lauren McLaurin, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-02-05 / obs. 112139558

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium
The New York Botanical Garden
Accession
00805706
Filed as
Solanum campechiense L.
Det. by
M. H. Nee 1997-01-01
Collected
E. M. Martínez S. 1997-04-30
Origin
MX
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 18 botanical countries

Regions where Solanum campechiense is native: Mexico Gulf, Mexico Northeast, Mexico Southeast, Mexico Southwest, Texas, Belize, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico Mexico GulfMexico NortheastMexico SoutheastMexico SouthwestTexasBelizeColombiaCosta RicaCubaDominican RepublicEcuadorEl SalvadorGuatemalaHaitiHondurasJamaicaNicaraguaPuerto Rico
Native distribution of Solanum campechiense, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Belize BLZ SOUTHERN AMERICA
Colombia CLM
Costa Rica COS
Cuba CUB
Dominican Republic DOM
Ecuador ECU
El Salvador ELS
Guatemala GUA
Haiti HAI
Honduras HON
Jamaica JAM
Nicaragua NIC
Puerto Rico PUE
Mexico Gulf MXG NORTHERN AMERICA
Mexico Northeast MXE
Mexico Southeast MXT
Mexico Southwest MXS
Texas TEX

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Where it actually grows measured, from 137 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 9.4 °C 20.2 °C 23.5 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 28.5 °C 32.7 °C 35.8 °C
Annual rainfall 657 mm 1,174 mm 2,358 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 11 mm 23 mm 213 mm

It is barely found anywhere that freezes. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 137 research-grade observations of Solanum campechiense that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.

Also published as 5 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Solanum campechiense Banks ex Aiton
  • Solanum campechiense var. campechiense
  • Solanum concisum Dunal
  • Solanum guanicense Urb.
  • Solanum marmeladense Urb. & Ekman

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.