Exotic

Casual

New Zealand

Political Region

Ogle, C.C.; de Lange, P.J. et al. (2021)

Exotic

Casual

New Zealand

Political Region

AK 337387; Spontaneous Occurrence. Plants 'appeared' in nursery amongst planted seedlings. Presumably they arose as a seed contaminant of the potting mix. Solanum insanum (believed to be the wild progenitor of eggplant (S. melongena L.) is an aggressive weedy species of tropical regions – it is probably native to East Africa though it now has a distribution from African across the Middle East to India and Sri Lanka. The New Zealand collections are probably this species though in some respects they fall within S. melongena, which is not unexpected as the two species frequently hybridise (S. Knapp pers. comm.).