Description: Perennial herbs, shrubs or vines with simple or branched hairs.
Leaves simple, entire, petiolate.
Inflorescence mostly solitary flowers or fasiculate at leaf axils. Flowers diurnal or nocturnal, often only a few opening at a time, 5-merous, 10-nerved, corolla white, blue or purplish, rotate or reflexed, anthers yellow or orange with adaxial slits; style slender, glabrous, stigma capitate, ovules many.
Fruit a fleshy or juicy berry, globose, mostly red, orange or yellow; seeds many, light coloured, with embryo coiled around the edge of the seed and surrounding endosperm.
Distribution and occurrence: World 150 species. Tropical America and East Asia. Australia 1 species naturalised in NSW and SA.
Text by Louisa Murray
Taxon concept: Carmen Benitez de Rojas and William G. D'Arcy (1997) The Genus Lycianthes (Solanaceae) in Venezuela. Annuals of the Missouri Botanical Garden. Volume 84, No. 2, p 167-200.
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