''Solanum bahamense'', commonly known as the Bahama nightshade, is a

plant Plants are predominantly Photosynthesis, photosynthetic eukaryotes of the Kingdom (biology), kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all curr ...

in the

nightshade family The Solanaceae , or nightshades, are a family of flowering plants that ranges from annual and perennial herbs to vines, lianas, epiphytes, shrubs, and trees, and includes a number of agricultural crops, medicinal plants, spices, weeds, and orna ...

. It is native across the

West Indies The West Indies is a subregion of North America, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea that includes 13 independent island countries and 18 dependencies and other territories in three major archipelagos: the Great ...

, from the

Florida Keys The Florida Keys are a coral island, coral cay archipelago located off the southern coast of Florida, forming the southernmost part of the continental United States. They begin at the southeastern coast of the Florida peninsula, about south of ...

east to Dominica (excluding

Hispaniola Hispaniola (, also ; es, La Española; Latin and french: Hispaniola; ht, Ispayola; tnq, Ayiti or Quisqueya) is an island in the Caribbean that is part of the Greater Antilles. Hispaniola is the most populous island in the West Indies, and t ...

). It is a common species in coastal habitats, often on calcareous soils.

Taxonomy

Originally described by

Carl Linnaeus Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, ...

, it has a convoluted

taxonomic Taxonomy is the practice and science of categorization or classification. A taxonomy (or taxonomical classification) is a scheme of classification, especially a hierarchical classification, in which things are organized into groups or types. A ...

history. ''S. bahamense'' is known by many junior synonyms and involved in several cases of

homonym In linguistics, homonyms are words which are homographs (words that share the same spelling, regardless of pronunciation), or homophones (equivocal words, that share the same pronunciation, regardless of spelling), or both. Using this definition, ...

y. Some additional varieties of ''S. bahamense'' have been described, but they are not considered

taxonomical In biology, taxonomy () is the scientific study of naming, defining ( circumscribing) and classifying groups of biological organisms based on shared characteristics. Organisms are grouped into taxa (singular: taxon) and these groups are given ...

ly distinct today: * ''Solanum bahamense var. inerme'' Dunal * ''Solanum bahamense var. lanceolatum'' Griseb. (Not to be confused with '' S. lanceolatum''.) * ''Solanum bahamense var. luxurians'' D'Arcy * ''Solanum bahamense var. rugelii'' D'Arcy * ''Solanum bahamense var. subarmatum'' (Willd.) O.E.Schulz

References

bahamense Plants described in 1753 Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus {{Solanales-stub