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Family: Solanaceae
friegaplatos
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Description: A small weedy tree with soft wood, a weak, trunk, often branched low. Young plants have sharp spines on the stem and branches. Small branches and petioles are covered in small, white, dense scales. Leaves are simple, alternate, irregularly sized and shaped but generally broad and round, with an unequal base. Juveniles leaves are larger and often lobed. Leaf underside is densely pubescent and appears whitish. Reproduction: Flowers are flat, white, star-shaped, with five erect, pointed yellow stamen in the center, typical of this large, weedy genus. Flowers are produced throughout much of the year. The fruit is a small berry, green at first but maturing yellow, containing many small seeds. Most fruiting is from June to August. Distribution: Widespread but not often within forest, where it is restricted to fairly large clearings. Similar Species: The unequal leaf base and whitish leaf underside are very distinctive. Descripción: Árbol de 5 a 10 m de alto. Tronco ramificado a baja altura. En plantas juveniles el tronco y las ramas tienen espinas. Ramitas terminales con escamas y pelos lepidotos. Hojas simples, alternas o subopuestas, de 10-30 x 5-15 cm, ovadas, con ápice acuminado, bordes enteros y base redondeada o desigual. Las hojas son verdes en el haz y blancas o grises en el envés. En plantas juveniles las hojas son de mayor tamaño en comparación con los adultos, a veces presentan los bordes lobulados. Siempre en el par de hojas una es más pequeña que la otra. Pecíolo de 1-6 cm de largo. Flores blancas. Frutos en bayas globosas, de 1-1.5 cm de diámetro, verdes, tornándose amarillos al madurar. Datos Ecológicos: La especie crece a bajas y medianas elevaciones, en bosques húmedos o muy húmedos. Común y ampliamente distribuida en bosques de Panamá. Crece en bosques secundarios y lugares abiertos, dentro del bosque maduro prefiere los claros. Florece y fructifica durante todo el año, principalmente de mayo a noviembre. Las flores son visitadas por abejas y otros insectos. Las semillas son dispersadas por animales. Especies Parecidas: A menudo se confunde con otras especies de Solanum, pero Solanum hayesii se caracteriza por sus hojas blancas o grises por el envés y con la base desigual. Usos: Los brotes tiernos y las raíces de esta planta se emplean en la medicina popular. Shrub or tree, to 12 m tall; trunk usually armed with prickles; bark smooth; wood soft; stems densely matted with sessile stellate trichomes, usually unarmed except on juveniles. Leaves alternate; petioles 1.5-4.5 (6) cm long; blades ovate, abruptly acuminate, obtuse to rounded and inequilateral at base, 11-29 cm long, 6-17 cm wide, shiny and glabrous to sparsely stellate-pubescent above (especially on younger leaves), very densely pubescent below with stalked stellate trichomes; juvenile plants with the petioles armed, the leaves lobed, to 42 cm long and 30 cm wide. Inflorescences of usually once-branched, indeterminate racemes on stems below upper leaves, to 6 cm long (longer in fruit); flowers 5-parted, white, densely stellate-tomentose, to 2 cm wide; calyx 3-4 mm long, the lobes +/- truncate and mucronate at apex; corolla deeply lobed, ca 1 cm long; stamens yellow; filaments thick, fused to tube; anthers 3-4.5 mm long, with both terminal pores and longitudinal slits; pollen shed while style short; style thick, to 2 mm long, elongating to 7 mm. Berries globose, to 13 mm diam, yellow at maturity; seeds many, +/- ovoid, ca 3 mm long. Croat 7706. Frequent in the forest; rare along the shore. Flowers throughout much of the year; known to flower from September to May, mostly from November to May. The fruits apparently require several months to mature, but mature fruits may be found on trees that are still flowering during the dry season. Trees in the species bear flowers all of one type, either short-styled or long-styled. The short styles are 2 mm long, held well beneath the anthers. The long styles first equal the height of the anthers, then lengthen to 7 mm, well above the anthers. Pollen is ready to shed at anthesis, and the stigma is apparently receptive at the same time. Nicaragua to Peru. In Panama, known from tropical moist forest in the Canal Zone and Bocas del Toro, from premontane wet forest in Colón, Coclé, and Panama, from tropical wet forest in Colón, and Coclé, and from premontane rain forest in Panama. Bocas Species Database Characteristics: Medium tree. -Shrub or tree to 12 m tall. Trunk armed.-Flora of Panama, Vol. 60-3, p. 701 "...distinctive in its small flowers and usually shiney leaf uppersides." Flowers white.- Leaves usually not lobed, acute apically, basally obtuse. |