Botanical name: Solanum multiflorum    Family: Solanaceae (Potato family)
Synonyms: Solanum indicum var. multiflorum, Solanum violaceum subsp. multiflorum

Nilgiri Nightshade is an erect shrub, 2-3 m, armed, much branched. Stems are robust, round, densely velvet-hairy and prickly, the prickles up to 1 cm long and 6 mm wide, straight to slightly curved, flattened, orange-brown. Leaves are simple, more or less deeply lobed, the blades 5-20 cm long, 3.5-16 cm wide, ovate, papery, discolorous, unarmed or prickly with up to 20 straight prickles to 1 cm long on primary and secondary veins on both sides of the leaf; upper surface densely to sparsely velvet-hairy, lower surface densely velvet-hairy. Major veins 3-5 pairs; base wedge-shaped to flat, often oblique; margins shallowly to deeply lobed, the lobes 3-4 on each side, 1.5-5 cm long, broad-triangular to obovate, often with well-developed secondary lobes, at tip pointed to rounded; tip pointed; leaf-stalks 1-4 cm, unarmed or with a few straight prickles. Flower clusters are 3-7 cm long, with 10-20 flowers, 3-6 flowers open at any one time. Flowers are 5-merous, 1.3-1.5 cm in diameter, violet to purple, star-shaped, lobed about 2/3 to the base. Sepal-tube is 2-6 mm long, obconical to cup-shaped, sepals 2-6 mm long, 1.5-2 mm wide, long-triangular, at tip long-tapering. Fruit is a spherical berry, many per cluster, 0.6–0.9 cm in diameter, orange-red to dark brown when ripe, shiny. is endemic to the western part of Tamil Nadu Province in southern India, occurring in the Nilgiri, Coimbatore, Didingul and Madurai districts.

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The flower labeled Nilgiri Nightshade is ...