[Illustration: Tolguacha--Datura meteloides.]
There are many kinds of Physalis, most of them American, difficult to distinguish; herbs, often slightly woody below; flowers whitish or yellowish; corolla more or less bell-shaped, with a plaited border; style slender, somewhat bent, with a minutely two-cleft stigma. In fruit the calyx becomes large and inflated, papery, angled and ribbed, wholly enclosing the pulpy berry, which contains numerous, flat, kidney-shaped seeds. The name is from the Greek, meaning "bladder," and refers to the inflated calyx, and the common names, Ground-cherry and Strawberry-tomato, are suggested by the fruit, which is juicy, often red or yellow, and in some kinds is edible.
[Sidenote: =Ground-cherry= _Phýsalis crassifòlia_ =Yellow Southwest=]
A pretty, delicate, desert plant, from six to eight inches high, with branching stems and light green leaves. It is sprinkled with pretty cream-yellow flowers, which are not spotted or dark in the center, with yellow anthers, and is hung with odd little green globes, each about three-quarters of an inch long, which are the inflated calyxes containing the berries.
[Sidenote: =Bladder-cherry= _Phsýalis Féndleri_ =Yellow Summer Ariz., Utah=]
A straggling perennial plant, about a foot high, with widely-branching, roughish stems, springing from a deep tuberous root. The leaves are dull green, roughish, rather coarse in texture, but not large, mostly less than an inch long, coarsely and irregularly toothed, and the flowers are the shape of a shallow Morning-glory, half an inch across, pale dull-yellow, marked with brown inside, with yellow anthers. This does not bear its berries close to the ground, as do many of its relations, and is not pretty. It grows in dry places, reaching an altitude of eight thousand feet.
[Illustration: Ground-cherry--Physalis crassifolia.]
There are a great many kinds of Solanum, abundant in tropical America; herbs or shrubs, sometimes climbing; often downy; calyx wheel-shaped, with five teeth or lobes, corolla wheel-shaped, the border plaited, with five angles or lobes and a very short tube; anthers sometimes grouped to form a cone, filaments short; fruit a berry, either enclosed in the calyx or with the calyx remaining on its base. This is the Latin name of the Nightshade, meaning "quieting."