J. Edmonds & I. Friis (2006) Solanum Flora of Somalia 3: 206-219

Plants perennial herbs, erect or spreading with several stems, up to about 70 cm tall. Stems usually densely armed with straight yellow prickles, occasionally completely unarmed;, youngger stes with white to greyish yellow stellate hairs. Leaves alternate, petiolate, very variable on the same plant; petioiles  1-6 cm long, densely beset with prickles of varying length; blades ovate-lanceolate, 1.2-10 cm long, 1.2-5 cm wide, bases usually truncate or subcoradate, margins entire to sinuate, apices rounded, both surfaces pubescent, sometimes armed over the main veins. Inflorescenecs raceme-like, with 6-10 flowers; peduncles 0-2.5 cm long, densely covered wit long straight prvikles, rachies up to 1.5 cm long; pedicels 1-1.5 cm long, elongating in fruit to 2 cm or more. Calyces deeply divided, with lanceolate lobes up to 5 mm long, armed with coarse and fine prickles; corollas pale blue-violet, rotate-stellate, 1-1.5(-2 cm) in diameter, lobes spreading to reflexed; stamens unequal, 1 filament 1-3 mm longer than the 4 others, 4 anthers about 5 mm long, the other about 8 m long, susessil or on short filaments; styles exceeding the anthers by 1-1.5 mm. Fruits yellow, globose, about 1 cm in diameter, fry, usually completely enclosed by the enlarges and heavily armed calycles; seeds shiny, black.

Solanum coagulans grows in acacia-Commiphora bushland, on dunes, and a weed in fields and on waste land at 30-1800 m. It is known from regions n1-3, C2, S1-3 of the Flora of Somalia, Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia. 

©Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; reproduced with permission.