Link to Jaltomata home page

The information on this page may be cited as a communication with professor Thomas Mione, Central Connecticut State University,
Biology Department, Copernicus Hall, 1615 Stanley Street, New Britain, CT 06050-4010

Description of the genus Jaltomata (Solanaceae)

Jaltomata Schlechtendal is a diverse neotropical genus of about 50 self-compatible species.  
Perennial herbs to shrubs usually to about 1 or 1.5 m high (-- 4 m when scandent without specialized structures); unarmed; terrestrial but epiphytic collections of J. procumbens have been documented; J. salpoensis can grow on rocks.  Branches erect or spreading; 4- or 5-sided to terete; usually hollow. 
Vesture of multicellular finger- or dendritic-hairs, gland-tipped or not. 
Leaves alternate or appearing opposite (rarely appearing verticillate); simple; petiolate; estipulate; ovate, ovate-lanceolate or ovate-acuminate, sometimes basally truncate; entire, subentire or toothed; sometimes tapering asymmetrically along distal portion of petiole.  Inflorescence axillary or from a stem dichotomy (false dichotomy); pedunculate; umbel-like.  Pedicels basally articulated after fruit ripens; sometimes angled.  Flowers five-merous; bisexual; regular, usually protogynous. 
Calyx enclosing the bud with valvate aestivation. 
Flowering calyx with sepals partially fused; lobes triangular, narrowly triangular or obtuse; rotate with a stellate outline, or the lobes reflexed. 
Fruiting calyx conspicuously accrescent; green or purple; spreading behind berry, rotate to reflexed. 
Corolla with five larger lobes alternating with 5 smaller lobules, the latter sometimes inconspicuous or absent. 
Corolla aestivation with five valvate lobes, each lobe alternating with an inwardly pleated and shorter lobule. 
Corolla 1 - 6 cm in diameter; rotate, broadly infundibular, campanulate, tubular, or the tube urceolate and the limb revolute; if the corolla is non-rotate then the lobes flare. 
Filaments 5; filiform; markedly enlarged/ swollen at base where adnate to base of corolla, inserted on the ventral face of the anther meaning that the distal end of the filament (where it meets the anther) is visible on the ventral side and is not visible at all on the dorsal side of the anther; the expanded base usually pubescent with finger hairs; slender part of filament pubescent with finger hairs or not. 
Anthers dehiscing longitudinally, to 5 mm long. 
Ovary superior; bicarpellate (rarely tricarpellate in J. auriculata, and J. repandidentata I grew, see Murray, 1945); ovules 42 to over 400 per ovary.  Nectary disk annular around base of ovary.  Style slender; exerted or not.  Stigma single; bilobed, slightly bilobed, or grooved; self-compatible in the species that have been studied. 
Nectar clear drops at base of corolla and androecium, or, in numerous Peruvian and one Bolivian species orange to red, filling base of corolla and sometimes visible through corolla.  Fruit a juicy globose or oblate berry; 4 - 25 mm in diameter; many-seeded; black/purple, green, orange, red or nearly white.  

Radial corolla thickenings - many but not all Andean species; these are radially oriented thickenings of the corolla that extend from the base of the stamen toward the lobule, and create at the base of the flower a cavity (between each pair of thickenings) that holds nectar. In this photo the green radially oriented lines in the base of the corolla are the radial corolla thickenings.

Similar Genera

     Jaltomata differs from Physalis by the former having a fruiting calyx that does not enclose the berry, while the fruiting calyx of Physalis encloses the berry.  Jaltomata differs from Solanum by the former having longitudinal anther dehiscence and an ovarian nectar disk producing nectar, while Solanum has anthers with terminal pores and no ovarian disk nor nectar.  Jaltomata differs from Cuatresia by the former having basal pedicel articulation while the latter lacks pedicel articulation (Hunziker, 1987).

Literature 
Geographic distribution of the genus Jaltomata