Solanum havanense Jacq.

Solanum havanense is a striking plant, with its large purple flowers and bright purplish blue fruits. It was brought into cultivation in Europe and appears to have been spread widely amongst botanic gardens (see synonyms), with some loss of information as to its original provenance. The flowers of S. havanense expand through anthesis, with the corolla lobes becoming both larger and more divided with time (shown clearly in Hooker, 1827). The corolla color also fades from bright to pale purple, and the lobe orientation becomes more planar.

Solanum havanense is relatively common and widespread in the Greater Antilles, occurring on Cuba, Jamaica and the Cayman Islands (a single collection, possibly cultivated?), but apparently absent from Puerto Rico and Hispaniola; the single specimen from the Dominican Republic (Jiménez 1907) is most probably cultivated. Specimen data indicate that it is relatively common, and although its habitat is the coastal fringe making it possibly at risk from coastal development, it has been assigned a preliminary conservation status of Near Threatened (NT) and standard monitoring is suggested (Yoder, 2006).

No specimen of S. havanense attributable to Jacquin has been found, despite intensive searches in many herbaria (principally BM, LINN and W) where such a sheet, if it had ever existed, might have been preserved. No original material was cited in the protologue (“ – caule inermi, frutescente; foliis ovato-lanceolatis, nitidis, integerrimis; pedunculis paucifloris”, Jacquin, 1760: 15), so any type selected must be a neotype. The illustration of S. havanense in Jacquin’s first illustrated edition of the Selectarum Stirpium Americanarum Historia (Jaqcuin, 1763), a copper engraving taken from original drawings done by Jacquin in the field (see Wiltshear, 1913) is very accurate, and I have chosen it as the neotype of the species (Knapp 2008). The much more detailed description in Jacquin (1763) mentions the distinctive blue fruit of S. havanense, and the plate in the hand-painted color edition of Selectarum Stirpium Historia Iconibus (Jacquin, 1780) clearly shows this. These color paintings were based on the original copper plates used in 1763 (see Wiltshear, 1913), but that of S. havanense was modified slightly by the addition of additional flowers and another fruit. Similarly, specimens of neither S. coriaceum nor S. myrtifolium have been found. A specimen of S. havanense labelled as “Solanum coriaceum Hook. Bot. Mag.” at Kew (K00005238) is not clearly associated with the description and does not have the distinctive calyx morphology depicted in the plate. These names too are lectotypified using the original illustrations. Vellozo’s (1829) description of S. havanense may be a re-description of Jacquin’s plant, but no reference to Jacquin is made in the protologue or accompanying material. I have therefore treated Vellozo’s name as a newly proposed name, and have lectotypfied it using the illustrations published in 1831, as no herbarium specimens are extant from Vellozo’s work (Carauta, 1973).