Mystery Potato
- To: m*@ucdavis.edu
- Subject: Mystery Potato
- From: K*@aol.com
- Date: Thu, 15 Jul 1999 13:00:02 EDT
All:
I need some help identifying a mystery potato. I purchased a plant last year
that was just labeled "Potato Vine," although it clearly wasn't a vine. It
is an upright, herbaceous perennial in the Solanaceae. It might even be in
the genus Solanum. The maroon-colored, upright stems are .5m to nearly one
meter in length. The branches and leaves are opposite. The leaves are dark
green, lanceolate, entire to irregularly toothed, and 5 to 15cm in length.
The rich purple-blue flowers are large, around 4cm across, the 5 petals
uniting into a tubular corolla around 3cm in length. They appear in clusters
of 2 to 4 on branched stems arising in the axils of the leaves, although
usually only one flower per cluster is open at a time. The plant died
completely back this winter, and I cut it to the ground, but it came back
from the roots and even sent up a couple of wandering shoots nearby, so it
shows some tendency to spread, albeit slowly. Anyway, I'd like to know what
it is, and if any of you recognize it from this description, please drop me a
line. Thanks.
Kurt Mize
Stockton, California
USDA Zone 9
