Solanum retroflexum (black nightshade)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Solanum retroflexum, photographed by Manuel R Popp — fig. a Manuel R Popp, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-02-17 / obs. 179724991

Solanum retroflexum, photographed by Tony Rebelo — fig. b Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 179636371

Solanum retroflexum, photographed by Jeremy Gilmore — fig. d Jeremy Gilmore, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 175596432

Solanum retroflexum, photographed by linkie — fig. g linkie, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 171846283

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 12 botanical countries

Native distribution of Solanum retroflexum, 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
Botswana	BOT	AFRICA
Cape Provinces	CPP
Eswatini	SWZ
Free State	OFS
KwaZulu-Natal	NAT
Lesotho	LES
Malawi	MLW
Mozambique	MOZ
Namibia	NAM
Northern Provinces	TVL
Zambia	ZAM
Zimbabwe	ZIM

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 40 in flower of 60 examined

89%

57%

63%

64%

Proportion of examined Solanum retroflexum in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	8	9	89%	56% to 98%
Feb	8	14	57%	33% to 79%
Mar	5	8	63%	31% to 86%
Apr	7	11	64%	35% to 85%
May	3	4	too few examined
Jun	0	0	too few examined
Jul	0	1	too few examined
Aug	0	1	too few examined
Sep	2	3	too few examined
Oct	2	3	too few examined
Nov	3	3	too few examined
Dec	2	3	too few examined

Peak flowering in Jan. Each bar is the share of Solanum retroflexum 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. 40 of 60 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 8 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. 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 8 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 burbankii Bitter
Solanum burbankii var. glabrescens Polg.
Solanum kraussianum Buchinger ex Krauss
Solanum nigrum var. burbankii (Bitter) Filov
Solanum nigrum var. probstii Polg.
Solanum retroflexum var. angustifolium Dunal
Solanum retroflexum var. latifolium Dunal
Solanum retroflexum var. retroflexum

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.