Among the wide variety of plants received for determination by the University of Florida Agricultural Experiment Station, members of the genus Solatium and its close relatives Lycianthes and Lycopersicon appear from time to time. Prompted as an aid to identification of such materials, this paper includes 32 tli Table 1 lists the Florida taxa with some of their characteristics. The assemblage is a good representation of the diversity in the group, yet members are recognizable by even unsophisticated workers as belonging to Solanum or a genus much like it. The taxonomic diversity of the Florida species facilitates their identification, especially of the introduced species, but some native groups are undergoing evolution, and their taxonomic distinctions are not so clear. To separate the taxa, Key No. 1 (p. 830) makes use of vegetative and floral characters, and Key No. 2 (p. 833) makes use of characters of the fruit.
MethodsLiving plants were studied in most counties of Florida during the years 1966-68, and many plants were grown in the greenhouse in Gainesville from seed collected during field visits. Seed from a number of non-Florida sources, particularly New Zealand, California, and the Antilles was grown out for comparison. Major North American and European herbarium holdings of Solanum specimens from Florida were studied either through loans or personal visits. Chromosomes of several taxa were counted using anther squash technique, and some of these counts were reported earlier ( D'Arcy, 1969 ) .The count of Solanum racemosum reported here was made from root tip squashes. In noting chromosome counts, usually only one recent report is cited although, there are sometimes more in the literature. Pollen was acetolysed according to the method of Erdtman (1952) using Florida material. Measurements are the range of ten normal grains from three different plants, or where fewer plants were available, from one or more flowers.1 Revised portion of a thesis written under the guidance of D. B. Ward and submitted to the University of Florida in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the M.S. degree. Financial support was provided through the offices of D. B. Ward and H. L. Popenoe, both of the University of Florida, and W. H. Lewis, Washington University, St. Louis. Curators and other associates of the many herbaria who lent specimens, sent seed, provided bibliographic and nomenclatural advice and otherwise assisted are acknowledged with gratitude. The following deserve special mention: R. A. Howard,
