SOLANACEE, or SOLANE/E, a natural order of exogenous plants, mostly herbaceoul plants and shrubs, but including a few tropical trees. The leaves arc mostly alternate, undivided, or lobed, without stipules. The flowers are regular, or nearly so; the calyx and corolla generally 5-cleft; the stamens generally five. The fruit is either a capsule or a berry, mostly 2-celled. The plants of this order are mostly natives of tropical countries, a small number extending into the temperate and moderately cold climates of both hemispheres; in the coldest regions they are entirely They are mostly distinguished by an offensive smell, and by containing in greater or less abundance a narcotic, poisonous substance, usually associated with a pimgent principle, and some of them are among the most active poisons. Sometimes the narcotic substance predomi nates, as in mandrake (q.v.) and henbane (q.v.); sometimes the pungent substance pre
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dominates, or is alone present, as in Cayenne pepper (capsicum); sometimes both are present in more or less equal proportion, as in tobacco, thorn-apple, or stramonium, and belladonna. The fruit is generally poisonous; but that of a considerable number of species, in which acids and mucilage predominate, is eatable, as. for instance, the berries of the winter cherry and other species of physalis, those of the egg-plant (q.v.) and some other species of aularturn, and of the love-apple (lycoperskum). The tubers, which occur in a few species, contain much starch, and serve as an article of food, of which tha potato is the chief example. The seeds of all contain a fixed oil, which in the s. of Ger• many is expressed from time seeds of the belladona itself.