Shrub or small tree to 5 m tall; twigs reddish with long, multiseriate-stalked stellae which usually have long midpoints, armed with short, slightly recurved spines. Leaves to 25 cm long, entire, broadly ovate or elliptical, apically acumi-nate, basally rounded, above with dispersed to dense, sessile, multangulate hairs, the arms long and slender; beneath tomentose with smaller sessile hairs and with long-stalked hairs as well, the major veins conspicuous; petioles 3-4 cm long, usually unarmed. Inflorescence lateral, several-flowered, on a straight, stout, tomentose peduncle 3-4 cm long; pedicels stout, 5-10 mm long, not much en-larged in fruit. Flowers with the calyx 10 mm long, deeply lobed, the lobes accrescent in fruit and becoming foliaceous, broadly or narrowly ovate, tomentose outside and hirsute at the apex inside; corolla white, 3 cm across, lobed nearly to the base, the lobes lanceolate, tomentose outside, glabrous within; anthers 7-9 mm long on short filaments, broad at the base and narrowing in the upper portion; ovary densely pubescent, the style glabrate. Fruit globose, to 15 mm across, densely viscid-pubescent with short, glandular, simple hairs, a few scattered stellate hairs often present; seeds lenticular, pinkish, 3-4 mm long. The fruit of this species is often persistent on the tree until the pericarp has withered away leaving the pinkish seeds exposed. At no stage is the fruit soft or juicy. Solanum accrescens is somewhat variable as to density of pubescence, most plants being definitely wooly on the young parts, but on a few collections the leaves are membranaceous and merely soft tomentose. Panamanian material differs from Costa Rican in pubescence, the stellae of having distinct midpoints, the result being a tomentose rather than puberlent appearance.
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