Welcome to Solanaceae Source

Solanaceae Source aims to provide a worldwide taxonomic monograph of the nightshade family whose species that are used as food (potatoes, tomatoes and eggplants), medicines (henbane and deadly nightshades) and in horticulture (petunias). We began this journey with the on-line monograph of all species in the mega-diverse genus Solanum. The National Science Foundation (NSF) funded the Solanum project as part of the Planetary Biodiversity Inventories (PBI) mission.

We added names for all members of the family to the resource with the collaboration of the International Plant Names Index (IPNI), and are working through these with the help of the Solanaceae community worldwide. This will contribute to diverse projects such as the World Flora On-Line that is contributing the the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation.

NOTE: The specimen data presented on the website are NOT up to date, we are working on a better way to present them; they should be used with caution!

The website and database behind it are constantly being updated and improved - we hope you will bear with us as we both improve the site and the data that underpin it. Synonymy may not be perfectly up to date, and some new species may have not been added yet.