Rob's plants
home garden plants wildlife seed photos
plant sale journal topics plantlinks fun guestbook

Solanum atropurpureum

 
Solanum atropurpureum
malevolence

Common name malevolence
Family solanaceae
Life cycle tender perennial
Flowers white (summer)
Size 6'
Light sun
From seed germinate with bottom heat
detailed seed-starting info below

One of the spiny members of the eggplant family. In fact, this was the first one we grew in our garden, spurred in no small part by the colorful description in the J.L. Hudson seed catalog (from which I've borrowed the "common" name, malevolence). That was all before I started taking pictures of my plants, so I was glad to have an opportunity to grow it again and refresh my memory. The most striking features on this one are the shiny deep-purple stems, covered in fierce thorns of the same color. The flowers are creamy yellow - a departure from the purple that is more common in the ornamental solanums we grow. Fruits are small and round; they start off two-toned stripey green, and mature to yellow. As solanums go, this one is relatively frost-tolerant - the photo at right was taken after a few freezes into the 20s.

Solanum atropurpureum
The early-spring cleanup job is somewhat daunting...

We left this plant behind in our Pennsylvania garden (and wish it well); we don't grow it in Houston.

Read the other spiny solanums in our garden

Seed for this plant is included on my seed trade list

One or more images of this plant are included in my stock photo catalog

About my plant portraits
PlantLinks to other web pages about Solanum atropurpureum


Visitors to this page have left the following comments


Seed-starting details for this plant

  1. Seed from '07 trade. Baggy 75F (100%G, 10-14d)
  2. Seed from '08 garden. Baggy 75F (100%G, 5-11d)
  3. Seed from '09 garden. Baggy 75F (100%G, 5-11d)
  4. Seed from '09 garden. Baggy 75F (100%G, 6-8d)
  5. Seed from '11 garden. Baggy 75F (95%G, 7-12d)
  6. Seed from '11 garden. Baggy 75F (95%G, 8-16d)


I welcome comments about my web pages; feel free to use the form below to leave feedback about this particular page. For the benefit of other visitors to these pages, I will list any relevant comments you leave, and if appropriate, I will update my page to correct mis-information. Faced with an ever-increasing onslaught of spam, I'm forced to discard any comments including html markups. Please submit your comment as plain text. If you have a comment about the website as a whole, please leave it in my guestbook. If you have a question that needs a personal response, please e-mail me.

Your name

Your comments