Solanum violaceumOrtega

nightshade

WFO wfo-0001032413 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Solanum violaceum, photographed by chiuluan
fig. a chiuluan, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-20 / obs. 199129266

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 20 botanical countries

Regions where Solanum violaceum is native: China South-Central, China Southeast, Hainan, Taiwan, Assam, Bangladesh, East Himalaya, India, Jawa, Laos, Lesser Sunda Is., Malaya, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Sumatera, Thailand, Vietnam, West Himalaya China South-CentralChina SoutheastHainanTaiwanAssamBangladeshEast HimalayaIndiaJawaLaosLesser Sunda Is.MalayaMyanmarNepalPakistanSri LankaSumateraThailandVietnamWest Himalaya
Native distribution of Solanum violaceum, 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
Assam ASS ASIA-TROPICAL
Bangladesh BAN
East Himalaya EHM
India IND
Jawa JAW
Laos LAO
Lesser Sunda Is. LSI
Malaya MLY
Myanmar MYA
Nepal NEP
Pakistan PAK
Sri Lanka SRL
Sumatera SUM
Thailand THA
Vietnam VIE
West Himalaya WHM
China South-Central CHC ASIA-TEMPERATE
China Southeast CHS
Hainan CHH
Taiwan TAI

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 31 in flower of 41 examined

Proportion of examined Solanum violaceum in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 2 6 33% 10% to 70%
Feb 7 7 100% 65% to 100%
Mar 2 3 too few examined
Apr 3 5 60% 23% to 88%
May 4 4 too few examined
Jun 1 1 too few examined
Jul 3 3 too few examined
Aug 1 1 too few examined
Sep 3 3 too few examined
Oct 2 3 too few examined
Nov 2 3 too few examined
Dec 1 2 too few examined

Peak flowering in Feb. Each bar is the share of Solanum violaceum 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. 31 of 41 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 9 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 31 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 agreste Roth ex Roem. & Schult.
  • Solanum agreste Roth
  • Solanum agreste Brouss. ex Roem. & Schult.
  • Solanum album C.Y.Wu & S.C.Huang
  • Solanum anghivi Bojer ex Dunal
  • Solanum chinense Dunal
  • Solanum coccineum Dunal
  • Solanum ferox Jungh. ex Miq.
  • Solanum heynii Roem. & Schult.
  • Solanum himalense var. himalense
  • Solanum indicum Roxb.
  • Solanum indicum f. album C.Y.Wu & S.C.Huang
  • Solanum indicum f. indicum
  • Solanum indicum subsp. indicum
  • Solanum indicum var. indicum
  • Solanum indicum var. inerme Van Heurck & Müll.Arg.
  • Solanum indicum var. mesarchon Bitter
  • Solanum indicum var. parvifolium Dunal
  • Solanum indicum var. sinuato-lobatum Dunal
  • Solanum junghuhnii Miq.
  • Solanum kurzii Brace ex Prain
  • Solanum lividum Willd. ex Dunal
  • Solanum nelsonii Zipp. ex Span.
  • Solanum nivalomontanum C.Y.Wu & S.C.Huang

and 7 more.

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. USDA PLANTS Database. common name, checklist symbol SOFE2. public domain. 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.