Solanum symonii is a species of flowering plant in the family Solanaceae and is native to near-coastal areas of Western Australia and South Australia. It is an erect shrub with egg-shaped to lance-shaped leaves and pale lavender-purple flowers.
Solanum symonii is an erect or spreading, softly-wooded shrub that typically grows to a height of and is more or less glabrous apart from a few hairs on its growing points. The leaves are egg-shaped to lance-shaped, long and wide on a petiole long. The leaves lack prickles and are shallowly lobed. The flowers are borne in groups of two to six on a peduncle up to long, the rachis long, each flower on a pedicel long. The sepals are broadly triangular, long, the sepal lobes about long, the petals pale lavender-purple and long with notched lobes. Flowering occurs throughout the year with a peak from July to October, and the fruit is an oval to egg-shaped berry long.[1] [2] [3]
This species was first formally described in 1859 by Ferdinand von Mueller who gave it the name Solanum fasciculatum in Fragmenta Phytographiae Australiae from specimens collected near the Phillips River.[4] [5] Mueller's name was illegitimate because it had already been used for a different species (Solanum fasciculatum Vell., now known as Athenaea fasciculata).[6] In 1963, Hansjörg Eichler changed the name to Solanum symonii in the journalTaxon.[7] The specific epithet (symonii) honours David Eric Symon.[8]
Solanum symonii grows in sandy soil on coastal limestone and sand dunes from Geraldton in north-western Western Australia to the Yorke Peninsula in South Australia.