| Physalis peruviana L. |
| SOLANACEAE |
| Peruvian groundcherry, cape gooseberry, Barbados gooseberry, cherry tomato, gooseberry tomato, ground cherry, love apple, poha, strawberry tomato, wild gooseberry, winter cherry |
|
|
Disturbed areas, Minor problem species |
| Origin: Tropical America |
| Growth Form: Shrub |
| Plant Description: Soft-wooded, short-lived shrubs up to ca. 1 m tall, straggly with age, all parts densely pubescent with erect, simple or glandular hairs up to 1 mm long. Leaves simple, alternate, usually geminate, 1 larger than the other, ovate-acuminate, often 6 cm long, 4 cm wide, margins entire or rarely with a few blunt lobes, apex acuminate, base cordate, petioles 2-3 cm long. Flowers perfect, actinomorphic, solitary in the leaf axils, pedicellate; calyx connate in lower ", 5-lobed, veins often prominent, the lobes acumunate-triangular, ca. 1 cm long, distinct at apex; corolla yellow with well-defined purplish brown spots at base, 15-20 mm in diameter, the limb rotate or shallowly 10-lobed, the tube swollen into shallow nectary pouches between the filaments, densely pubescent with pale yellowish dendritic hairs below the spots and around the nectaries; style 5-7 mm long. Berries pale yellow, drying pale brown, aromatic, succulent, globose, 1.5-2 cm in diameter, enclosed in the inflated calyx 3-3.5 cm long. Seeds numerous, pale brown, discoid, 1.75-2 mm long, minutely shallowly reticulate, embryo curved, endosperm present. |
| Key Features: |
| Control: |
| Comments: |
|
|
|
|
| KEY |
 Confirmed (herbarium specimen) |
 Visual record |
 Suspected |
| Click on map grid square to view record information for each grid square. |
|
