Carolina horse-nettle

Solanum carolinense, the Carolina horse-nettle or apple-of-Sodom, is a perennial herb in the family Solanaceae native to the southeastern United States, from New England south to Florida and west to Texas and the central Great Plains, and now widely naturalized as a weed of cultivated fields, pastures, roadsides, and waste ground across much of the country. The plant arises from a deep extensively creeping rhizome from which arise stiffly erect to ascending hairy stems 30-100 cm tall, armed (like the leaves) with stout yellow straight or slightly recurved prickles up to 5 mm long along the stems, leaf midribs, and petioles, and clothed in stellate (star-shaped) hairs. Leaves are alternate, ovate-oblong to elliptic, 6-15 cm long, with deeply sinuate to coarsely toothed lobed margins and a tapering base, dull greyish-green on both surfaces, prickly along the midrib. The inflorescence is a small few-flowered cyme of nodding flowers, each 2-3 cm across, with a five-lobed star-shaped corolla varying from pale violet to almost white and a central cone of bright yellow connate anthers. The fruit is a globose berry 1-1.5 cm across, ripening from green and white-mottled to yellow and finally smooth yellow-orange when fully ripe.