Tall nightshade

Solanum chenopodioides, the whitetip nightshade or velvety nightshade, is a soft-stemmed annual to short-lived perennial herb of the family Solanaceae growing 30-100 cm tall and probably native to temperate South America (Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil), now widely naturalized across the Americas, southern Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. The much-branched stems are slender, often somewhat angular and clothed in fine appressed greyish hairs that give the foliage a velvety dull green appearance. The alternate leaves are ovate to rhombic-lanceolate, 2-7 cm long and 1-4 cm wide, with entire or shallowly sinuate margins, tapering to a winged petiole and finely pubescent on both surfaces. The inflorescence is a short axillary cymose umbel of 4-10 small flowers borne on a slender pedunculate stalk arising between the nodes. Each flower is about 4-7 mm across with five white reflexed corolla lobes and a central cone of bright yellow anthers. The fruit is a small spherical drupe-like berry 5-8 mm in diameter, dull purplish-black when ripe and characteristically borne with the calyx and pedicel strongly reflexed, distinguishing it from related members of the Solanum nigrum complex. It grows on roadsides, disturbed ground, fencelines and coastal scrub.