Taxonomic study on the wild species of genus Solanum L. in Egypt

A taxonomic revision of the genus Solanum L. in Egypt is presented. Nine native species are recognized, as well as the new recorded species S. diphyllum L. The work is devoted to study the morphological characters of each species, the nomenclature with synonyms, and the taxonomic relationships between the studied species. A key to Solanum species is given. The taxonomic relationships between the studied species are represented by the cluster analysis. The morphological variation measured by Euclidean distance process and phenogram was constructed. The phenogram showed that the studied species of genus Solanum can simply be divided into two groups. A phylogram was presented by using parsimony analysis of the morphological data. Both of phylogram and phenogram showed great similarity between S. sinaicum and S. villosum, suggesting that the two species can be considered as one species with two subspecies or varieties. The morphological characters showed highly significant role in the identification of the studied species.