Solanum mauritianum (earleaf nightshade)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Solanum mauritianum, photographed by Greg Tasney — fig. a Greg Tasney, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2022-06-13 / obs. 205711993

Solanum mauritianum, photographed by Joe Dillon — fig. d Joe Dillon, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203786636

Solanum mauritianum, photographed by Dragonette — fig. f Dragonette, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 203419500

Solanum mauritianum, photographed by Mike Bowie — fig. g Mike Bowie, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203077817

Solanum mauritianum, photographed by Shaun Swanepoel — fig. h Shaun Swanepoel, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203237648

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.

Native range 4 botanical countries

Native distribution of Solanum mauritianum, 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.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Argentina Northeast	AGE	SOUTHERN AMERICA
Brazil South	BZS
Brazil Southeast	BZL
Uruguay	URU

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.

Flowering 1,224 in flower of 2,058 examined

44%

29%

38%

61%

52%

68%

86%

75%

56%

60%

47%

35%

Proportion of examined Solanum mauritianum in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	58	133	44%	35% to 52%
Feb	28	95	29%	21% to 39%
Mar	45	119	38%	30% to 47%
Apr	125	206	61%	54% to 67%
May	82	157	52%	44% to 60%
Jun	256	375	68%	63% to 73%
Jul	257	299	86%	82% to 89%
Aug	124	165	75%	68% to 81%
Sep	60	107	56%	47% to 65%
Oct	83	138	60%	52% to 68%
Nov	55	118	47%	38% to 56%
Dec	51	146	35%	28% to 43%

Peak flowering in Jul. Each bar is the share of Solanum mauritianum observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 1,224 of 2,058 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 9 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 auriculatum Aiton
Solanum auriculatum var. auriculatum
Solanum carterianum Rock
Solanum pulverulentum Salisb.
Solanum tabaccifolium Vell.
Solanum verbascifolium subsp. auriculatum (Aiton) Kuntze
Solanum verbascifolium var. auriculatum (Aiton) Kuntze
Solanum verbascifolium var. auriculatum Maiden
Solanum verbascifolium var. typicum Hassl.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
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.