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Solanum sibundoyense is a small tree of Colombian cloud forests, grown for its acidulous edible fruit, known locally as tomate silvestre. It is hard to cultivate outside its native cool, humid highland climate, and does best in semi-shade.
Solanum sibundoyense is a species of plant in the family Solanaceae. It is endemic to Colombia, specifically to Sibundoy and surrounding areas, and usually resides in cloud forests, 1400–2300 meters in elevation. It is also known as tomate salvaje or tomate silvestre to natives of Colombia, and also sometimes called Cyphomandra sibundoyensis. It's a small tree 4–8 m tall. Stems glabrous or sparsely puberulent with glandular and eglandular hairs less than 0.5 mm long.
The fruits are edible and have a pleasant acidulous taste. The plant produces some of the largest fruits known in section Pachyphylla. The fruit pulp of some trees is sweet, juicy, and pleasant-tasting, and in others it is acidulous, and without any sweetness. A purplish layer of soft pulp surrounds the seeds. Fruits ripen slowly, but once ripe their shelf life is longer than that of the tamarillo. Although a good candidate for trial as a fruit crop, it may be difficult to successfully cultivate this species outside the specialized climate of southern Colombia where it is native. In New Zealand, it was noted that trees cultivated in semi-shade set large crops of fruit, but plants grown in full sun performed very poorly. The trees were somewhat subject to branch die-back on fruiting branches.
Dwarf Tamarillo · Solanum acaule · Sodaapple nightshade · Ethiopian nightshade · American black nightshade · Solanum arcanum · New Zealand nightshade · Solanum berthaultii · Tamarillo · Solanum brevicaule · Solanum cajanumense · Bitter Apple
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Solanum sibundoyense by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
Pet safety from the ASPCA toxic and non-toxic plant lists.
