Cockroach Berry

Sometimes cultivated for its bright, ornamental fruits that are poisonous.

Herbs or subshrubs, erect or sprawling, 30-60(-100) cm tall, copiously armed with pale yellow, needlelike prickles, pubescent with coarse, many-celled simple hairs. Stems conspicuously white lenticellate, glabrescent to pilose; prickles straight to slightly recurved, 0.5-1.8 cm. Leaves paired; petiole stout, 2-7 cm; leaf blade broadly ovate, 5-13 × 4-12 cm, with many-celled simple hairs adaxially, glabrous or hairy only along veins abaxially, prickly along veins on both surfaces, base cordate, margin 5-7-lobed to halfway, apex acute or acuminate. Inflorescences extra-axillary, racemose, 1-4-flowered; peduncle unbranched. Pedicel 5-12 mm. Calyx cup-shaped, ca. 5 × 8 mm; lobes ovate, pubescent as on stems. Corolla white, greenish at base; lobes lanceolate, ca. 12 × 4 mm. Filaments 2.5 mm; anthers lanceolate, ca. 6 mm. Ovary minutely stipitate glandular. Style 7-8 mm. Fruiting pedicel 2-2.5 cm. Fruiting calyx copiously armed, somewhat enlarged, not covering fruit. Berry orange-red, subglobose, 3.5-6 cm in diam., mesocarp white, spongy. Seeds yellowish, discoid, with a conspicuous, thin orbicular wing, 4-6 mm in diam. Fl. Jun-Aug, fr. Aug-Oct.

Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, Hainan, Hunan, Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Sichuan, Taiwan, Yunnan, Zhejiang, also cultivated in Henan and Liaoning [native to Brazil; now a widespread weed of warm regions]

Wastelands, near roadsides, open forests, thickets; 200-1500 m.

Solanum bodinieri H. Léveillé & Vaniot; S. ciliatum Lamarck.

Solanum capsicoides, the cockroach berry, known as polohauai'i in Polynesia, is a flowering plant in the family Solanaceae. It is native to eastern Brazil but naturalized in other tropical regions, where it sometimes becomes an invasive weed.