Solanum usaramense Dammer

Climbing to sprawling perennial herb to small shrub up to 2 m; sympodia difoliate; hairs stellate, ± short stalked, regular or irregular, thinly radiate, often bearing a very short central ray; prickles yellowish ± fuscescent, shining, 0.5-3 mm long, 0.2-2.5 mm wide at the base, laterally compressed, broadly based, ± recurved, striate, with a few stellate hairs downwards or quite glabrous. Branches often much elongated, slender, whitish tomentose when young, becoming ashy-grey hairy with age, moderately or densely prickly. Leaves solitary; petiole 5-25 mm long; lamina membranous, 1.5-6.5 x 1-4.3 cm, ovate or elliptic to sub-orbicular, base rounded-obtuse, truncate or sub-cordate and ± unequal-sided, apex rounded to acute, entire to repand-lobed, the lobes very obtuse or rounded, finely tomentose at first, becoming thinly hairy beneath and to a lesser extent above, with 2-4 pairs of curved-ascending lateral nerves, unarmed or with a few scattered prickles along the midvein beneath. Cymes appearing lateral, leaf-remote, unbranched or rarely once-forked, racemiform, 2-6 cm long, 2-10-flowered, tomentose to sparsely hairy, often with a few recurved to nearly straight prickles, all flowers hermaphrodite and fertile, occasionally the flowers solitary; peduncle 0-10 mm long; rhachis 2-45 mm long, gradually elongate to 85 mm in fruit. Flowers (4)5-merous; pedicels 6-17 mm long, slender but thickened distally, with dense hairs and sparse recurved prickles, in fruit elongate to 25 mm, very thickened distally, deflexed. Calyx (2)2.5-5 mm long, 4-5 mm across, very accrescent, shortly campanulate or cupular, deeply lobed, tomentose to ± hairy, with curved or ± straight prickles; lobes ± unequal, 0.5-3.5 x 1-1.5 mm, ovate-triangular or lanceolate, acute, in fruit enlarged to 5(6) x 2(2.5) mm, curved out at the apex, later ± spreading. Corolla purplish to bluish, stelliform; limb 11-20 mm across; lobes 7-10 x 1.2-3 mm, lanceolate, slightly acute, tomentose outside and with hairs along the midrib inside, ± reflexed. Stamen filaments 0.7-1.5 mm long; anthers 6-7 x 1-1.5 mm, lanceolate-elliptic in outline, not very emarginate at the ends. Ovary c. lx 0.8 mm, ovoid-subglobose, glabrous; style 10-12 mm long, exceeding the stamens, straight or ± curved at the apex. Fruit shining red when ripe, drying dirty fuscescent, 8-11 mm in diameter, globose. Seeds ± numerous, pale fuscescent, sub shining, 3-3.5 x 2.5-3 mm, much compressed, oblique-reniform, manifestly reticulate all over.