Physalis pubescens L.

• Title

  Physalis pubescens L.

• Authors

  Nathaniel Lord Britton, Frances W. Horne

• Scientific Name

  Physalis pubescens L.

• Description

  Flora Borinqueña Physalis pubescens Hairy Ground Cherry Family Solanaceae Potato Family Physalis pubescens Linnaeus, Species Plantarum 183. 1753. No Spanish popular name for this annual, broad-leaved, viscid, hairy herb has been recorded; the English name is in allusion to the round, fleshy, red berry, enclosed by the calyx, with fancied resemblance to a cherry growing near the ground. The plant is frequent in waste and cultivated grounds in Porto Rico, mostly at lower elevations, sometimes becoming a weed, and grows also on Vieques Island; geographically it is widely distributed from the southern continental United States, nearly all over tropical America. Physalis (Greek, bladder, referring to the inflated fruiting calyx) is a Linnaean genus, with some 50 species of herbs, widely distributed in temperate and tropical regions, their leaves alternate, their flowers mostly solitary on axillary stalks. The bell-shaped, 5-toothed calyx, enlarged and inflated in fruit, usually 5-angled, encloses the fleshy, many-seeded berry; the corolla is broadly bell-shaped and plicate; the stamens are borne near the base of the corolla and are as many as its lobes, the anthers oblong; the usually 2-celled ovary contains many ovules, the style is slender, the stigma minutely 2-cleft. Physalis pubescens (hairy) is annual in duration, upright, or spreading, about 0.5 meter high, or lower, the stem and branches angled. Its thin, broad, pointed, stalked, coarsely toothed leaves are from 3 to 6 centimeters long. The flower-stalks are about 3 centimeters long, or shorter; the calyx is usually densely viscid-hairy, with lance-shaped, pointed teeth; the yellow corolla, often with a purple eye, is from 5 to 10 millimeters in diameter, the anthers purplish. The fruiting calyx is 2.5 or 3 centimeters long, netted-veined, long-pointed, the base impressed. There are 2 other species of Physalis in the Porto Rico Flora.