SOLANACEAE, Juss., 1789

Banfi, Enrico, Galasso, Gabriele & Bartolucci, Fabrizio, 2018, Nomenclatural novelties for the Euro + Med flora, Natural History Sciences 5 (1), pp. 53-57 : 55

SOLANACEAE

Three species are here involved: Solanum aethiopicum L. (scarlet eggplant), S. macrocarpon L. (gboma eggplant) and S. melongena L. (common eggplant). Solanum anguivi (Africa) is the wild ancestor of S. aethiopicum as highlited for the first time by Lester & Niakan (1986), then confirmed by the following authors (e.g., Knapp et al., 2013; Plazas et al., 2014). About the descent of the crop S. macrocarpon from the wild S. dasyphyllum (Africa) the same is true as for the previous species (Knapp et al., 2013; Plazas et al., 2014). Finally, S. insanum ( India) in the past has been forgotten and confused with other wild relatives of the Melongena group, especially S. incanum L.; it was also underestimated as the true ancestor of the common eggplant (Ranil et al., 2017).