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 An
Illustrated Guide to
Common Weeds
of New Zealand
Solanum
linnaeanum
apple
of Sodom
Family
SOLANACEAE
Reproduced from
Common
Weeds of New Zealand
by Ian Popay, Paul Champion & Trevor James
ISBN 0 473 09760 5
by kind permission of the
New
Zealand Plant Protection Society
Publication or other use of images or descriptive
text on these pages is unauthorised unless written permission is
obtained from the authors and publisher.
Appropriate acknowledgement
of the publication Common Weeds of New Zealand must always
be given.
Available from Nationwide Book Distributors
Short, spreading,
strongly spiny, woody perennial shrub up to 1 m or more tall. Mauve
or violet flowers 3 cm across, followed by green and white mottled
berries, ripening to yellow. Leaves lobed, downy underneath. The
most common prickly species of Solanum in NZ.
- Flowers Mauve
or violet, 25-35 mm in diameter, on hairy stalks up to 10 mm long.
Anthers 4-6 mm long. Flowers in few-flowered clusters. Flowers
Sep-May.
- Fruit Mottled
green and white berries up to 3 cm in diameter. Yellow when mature.
Poisonous.
- Leaves Egg-shaped
to oblong, up to 9 cm long by 7 cm wide, dark green on the upper
surface, downy underneath. Deeply and irregularly divided into
lobes with shallowly-waved margins.
- Stems Branched,
with strong yellow spines up to 1 cm long and scattered, star-shaped
hairs.
- Roots Non-suckering.
Habitat
Frost-free coastal
sands, poor pasture and scrub margins.
Distribution
NI only, common on
coastal and inland lowland North Auckland and Auckland. Less common
south to Taranaki and Hawkes Bay. Originally from north Africa.
Comments
Generally regarded
as a poisonous plant, but not often
eaten by stock.
Related
species
 White-edged
nightshade (Solanum marginatum) is a taller spiny shrub,
up to 5 m tall, distinguished by its white felted branches, leaves
with white undersides, and upper sides with a frosted margin.
Flowers white, sometimes with purple veins. Found in scrub, forest
margins, poor pasture, roadsides, waste places. Widespread and
sometimes common in NI, locally common in Nelson and occasional
in coastal areas as far south as Banks peninsula. Listed on the
National Pest Plant Accord (see
Introduction for details).
Derivation
of botanical name
Solanum Lat.
name of a plant; linnaeanum after Carl von Linné
(Linnaeus), 18th cent. Swedish botanist.
Web-notes:
Weed Links
On this site
Reproduced from Common Weeds
of New Zealand:
External Links
 Weedbusters
New Zealand
- Weedbusters is a weeds awareness and education programme that aims to
protect New Zealand's environment from the increasing weed problem.
- AgPest
- A free tool to assist farmers and agricultural professionals in decision-making regarding weed and pest identification, biology, impact and management.
 New Zealand Weeds Key
- An interactive identification key to the weeds of New Zealand. Developed at Landcare Research.
New
Zealand Plant Conservation Network naturalised plants
- Search for information on more than 2500 naturalised and weedy plants.
 New
Zealand Plant Protection Society
- Their main objective: "To pool and exchange information on the biology
of weeds, invertebrate and vertebrate pests, pathogens and beneficial organisms
and methods for modifying their effects."
-
 Massey
University Weeds Database- A site providing information about New Zealand weeds and weed control.
It has a series of pages showing pictures of New Zealand weeds, notes on
identification and control. It also provides information on a university
paper entitled Controlling Weeds.
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