Solanum cymbalariifolium
Not known.
Endemic to Somalia, rare and restricted to a small area in the northeastern part of the country; growing in scrub on limestone; ca. 700 m elevation.
Solanum cymbalariifolium has not been included in any molecular analyses to date (see Vorontsova et al. 2013). It is certainly a member of the Old World Clade within subgenus Leptostemonum (Levin et al., 2006).
Chiovenda, E. 1925. Nuove specie di Solanum Somale.Boll. Soc. Bot. Ital. 1925: 105-107. 1925.
Friis, I. 2006. Solanum. In: M. Thulin (ed.), Flora of Somalia 3: 206-219. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, United Kingdom.
Levin, R.A., N.R. Myers, & L. Bohs 2006. Phylogenetic relationships among the "spiny" solanums (Solanum subgenus Leptostemonum). Amer. J. Bot. 93: 157-169.
Vorontsova, M. S., S. Stern, L. Bohs, and S. Knapp. 2013. African spiny Solanum (subgenus Leptostemonum, Solanaceae): a thorny phylogenetic tangle. Bot. J. Linn. Soc. 173: 176-193. doi:10.1111/boj.12053
Solanum cymbalariifolium is instantly recognisable by its unusual palmately veined leaves with 3-5 basal veins, dense filiform pale yellow stem prickles, and simple stem trichomes up to 1.5 mm long. This attractive and unusual Somalian endemic is only known from four collections; this treatment has been drawn up from Collonette 208 and Beckett 470 and the description by Friis (2006).
One anther of S. cymbalariifolium is 1-2 mm longer than the others, a character overlooked by previous authors (Chiovenda 1925; Friis 2006b). There is often a second anther of intermediate length as well as slight variation in filament lengths. The buds and flowers are noticeably zygomorphic like of those of S. vespertilio and S. lidii of the Canary Islands and the New World section Androceras. Solanum coagulans and S. melastomoides from the same part of North Africa as S. cymbalariifolium also have zygomorphic flowers, but with unequal filaments rather than anthers. In the zygomorphic-flowered S. rostratum, the short anthers provide food for pollinating Bombus while the long anther deposits pollen onto the side of the bee, where it later comes into contact with styles of flowers with mirror-image reproductive parts (Bowers, 1975). No observation data on the pollination of S. cymbalariifolium is available but a similar mechanism could be operating.
Solanum cymbalariifolium is unlikely to be confused with other Solanum species in Somalia. It seems to be closest to S. cordatum and somewhat less similar to S. forskalii, and can be distinguished from these by its filiform prickles less than 0.5 mm apart on the young stems (versus young stems unarmed or with thicker prickles 1-10 mm apart in S. cordatum and S. forskalii), heteromorphic anthers (versus monomorphic in S. cordatum and S. forskalii), and simple hairs on young stems (versus porrect-stellate or multangulate-stellate hairs on the young stems of S. cordatum and S. forskalii).
In his protologue for S. cymbalariifolium, Chiovenda (1925) did not specify a herbarium in which the type collection was held. Friis (2006b) cited the specimen in FT as the holotype, but the Italian colonial herbarium was distributed amongst Florecen, Palermo and Naples (G. Domina, pers. comm.). We prefer to designate this sheets as the lectotype, as it is not certain there is no other material, or that Chiovenda only saw this material at what is now FT.