Potatoes

This post contains a few of the introduced ornamental members of the Solanaceae found around Nerja and a possible native. The large family Solanaceae contains;
the familiar vegetables aubergine, chili and sweet peppers, physalis, potato and tomato,
the familiar poisons deadly nightshade, henbane, mandrake and tobacco,
the familiar ornamentals petunia, physalis, shoo-fly, solanums and tobacco and many, many more.

All of the plants described after the break are deadly poisonous except for the Lycium, which has edible fruit and other parts used medicinally.





The first thing I noticed on entering the San Juan Capistrano area of Nerja was the smell of dama de noche, Cestrum nocturnum. The plants are covered in many tiny flowers that smell strongest in the evening and can be noticed a hundred metres away on a warm night. Sometimes called "queen of the night" by those embarrassed by the connotations of the exact translation of "lady of the night".

This plant is from the genus Solandra, possibly  the species maxima? There is apparently a lot of confusion about the identity of cultivated forms. Though the flowers of the copa de oro (cup of gold), floripondio del monte (mountain Brugmansia) or Chalice Vine are magnificent they have little smell for me, even at night. Though they are described as having a very coconutty fragrance at night, all I get is a slight scent of fruity decomposition. They make up for this by being abundant vines with flowers from the fever dream of an Art Nouveau book binder. Here it is overwhelming an ivy and a bougainvillea,

Here are the flowers in every stage from bud to withered: 

Just outside my front door was another of the night-fragrant lovelies, the Tree Datura or Angel's Trumpets (Brugmansia). All of the potato family seem to produce more abundant flowers and fruit than many other families.

Out of the gardens now and by the seashore, as close to the sea as any plants were growing I found a cambronero, arto or cambrón (Lycium intricatum, I think). Close relatives of the over-hyped goji berry (Lycium barbarum), introduced to Britain by the Duke of Argyll in the 18th century and now growing wild in many coastal areas.

This Lycium from the coast to the west of Nerja has a darker violet shade of flower.

A weed that was almost certainly introduced is the Thornapple (possibly Datura stramonium but there are three other species of Datura in Spain and this had no flowers to help identify it). Here by the Rio Chillar a few kilometres north of Nerja, showing why it is called a thornapple.

The Tree tobacco (Nicotiana glauca) is possibly the least decorative of the common tobacco plants. Seen on waste land everywhere.

Finally back to the seaside for the Apple of Sodom (which was Solanum sodomaeum but recently reclassified as Solanum linnaeanum, "honouring" the great botanist Linnaeus). In Spanish it is known as tomatillo del diablo, the "little tomato of the devil" a name it shares with what the British call Black Nightshade (Solanum nigrum). Introduced from Africa. It is poisonous, thorny and of little use, though something is eating those fruit.

It has spines on stem, leaf and calyx: