Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Annual or short-lived shrubs up to 1 m tall.

Stems: Numerous or scattered prickles on most parts, pale or straw–colored, the prickles up to 12 mm long, sparsely pilose with simple, few–celled hairs and minute glandular hairs, stems with intraxylary phloem.

Roots: Fibrous root system.

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades broadly ovate, up to 11 cm long and 10 cm wide. Apex acute or obtuse. Base rounded to subcordate. Simple hairs, prickles conspicuous. Margins entire with 5–7 lobes divided 1⁄2 or less to midrib. Petioles ca. 5 cm long. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers 2–4 in clusters on short peduncles 3–4 mm long, arising from an internodal position, pedicels 1–1.5 cm long. Lower flowers bisexual (perfect), upper flowers sometimes staminate, actinomorphic. Calyx tubular, 2–3 mm long, the lobes broadly lanceolate, 2–3 mm long, apex acute, prickly. Corolla white, deeply divided, the lobes ca. 10 mm long, glabrous. Stamens (4)5, inserted near base of corolla tube; filaments 1–2 mm long, glabrous; anthers pale yellow, distinct, erect and cohering into a conical structure, 5–6 mm long, opening by apical pores. Ovary superior, sparsely pubescent above, 2(3–4)-carpellate, placentation axile; ovules numerous; style 1, erect, 5–8 mm long; stigma green.

Fruit: Berries bright orange scarlet when mature; the flesh white; dryish; depressed–globose; 2–3.5 cm in diameter; glabrous. Seeds numerous; flattened; bordered by a distinct narrow wing ca. 1.5 mm wide; 4–5 mm in diameter; seed coat minutely pitted; embryo curved; submarginal; endosperm present.

Ploidy: 2n = 24

Habitat: Disturbed areas such as pastures; pond banks; along trails; and in cane fields; and in mesic forest and diverse mesic forest.

Elevation Range: 15–850 m.