Physalis angulata L.

Cutleaf Ground Cherry

Herb

Annual

Vascular

Cutleaf Ground Cherry is an annual species in the Nightshade family (Solanaceae). It is unclear if this species is native to Alabama. Cutleaf Ground Cherry most likely originated in tropical America and spread accidently as a weed associated with agriculture. It now occurs nearly worldwide in tropical and temperate areas. In Alabama in occurs statewide. Cutleaf Ground Cherry grows in fields and pastures, along roadsides, in vacant lots, and on sandbars along rivers. It is an erect annual with a tap root. The stems are green, hollow, branched above the middle, and glabrous. Leaves are petiolate, alternate, ovate to lanceolate in outline, and irregularly toothed. Flowers are solitary in the leaf axils. The flowers are campanulate and hang below the leaves. The flowers are creamy yellow without dark basal spots. The anthers are blue. The fruit is an orange berry enclosed in the inflated papery calyx. Cutleaf Ground Cherry has been used in herbal medicine, and it is sometimes cultivated for its unusual fruit. The ripe fruit is edible and sometimes called a “husk tomato”. Cutleaf Ground Cherry is a host for tomato bacterial spot, and viruses of tobacco, potato, okra, pepper, and beans.--A. Diamond

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Native FAC (NWPL)

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