Solanum heterodoxum Dunal

7.Solanum heterodoxumDunal, Hist. Nat. Solanum: 235 (1813). Fig. 9 Type. [icon] Solanum heterodoxum (lectotype, designated by Whalen (1979: 413): Hist. Nat. Solanum, tab. 25 (1813). Description. Prickly and sticky annual up to 70 cm tall; prickles basally slightly thickened; indumentum of glandular hairs mixed with stellate and simple hairs; leaves green, concolorous, pinnatisect or bipinnatisect, leaf lobes acutish; each cyme of 5–9 flowers; corolla violet, 10–17 mm in diameter, somewhat zygomorphic; one of five anthers longer, 3.5–5.0 mm long (all other anthers 2.5–4.0 mm long); fruit 10–13 mm in diameter, enclosed in a prickly calyx, dry, irregularly splitting at maturity, sclereidal concretions absent. Distribution. The native distribution area of the species is North America (Mexico and the southern states of the USA). It seems to be a rare alien in southern Europe (e. g., Poyarkova 1981; Galasso et al. 2018 a, 2024; Stoyanov et al. 2021). A putative first collection of this species in Europe was made in Italy in 1860 (G. Galasso, pers. comm.) and subsequently in Crimea (Feodosiya town, seacoast, 17 July 1893, O. A. Fedchenko & B. A. Fedchenko, LE). In the early period, the species was also cultivated in Kiev Oblast from seeds collected in Podolia (Ukraine) in 1928, on a field with Sorghum sp. (LE). In the North Caucasus (Fig. 7 C), only a single record is known. In 1957, the species was found in Krasnodar Krai (Galushko 1980) but was originally misidentified as S. sisymbriifolium. Ecology. Waste ground, roadsides. Residence status. Casual alien. Pathways of introduction. The annual species of S. sect. Androceras, including S. heterodoxum, produce abundant seed and have weedy potential (Stern et al. 2010). The old specimen from Russia, which is the only available record so far, lacks sufficient documentation of its locality. For this reason, the pathway of introduction cannot be determined for this species.