Petunioideae is a subfamily of the flowering plant family Solanaceae, the nightshades. It contains thirteen genera, as follows:
Benthamiella Speg. 12 species native to Patagonia: caespitose dwarf shrubs. The species B. pycnophylloides Speg. bears the Spanish common name leña de piedra in its native Argentina.
Brunfelsia L. Approximately 45 neotropical species. Shrubs with lavender or white flowers with slender tubes and narrow mouths in the centre of broad salver-form corolla lobes. Several species with medicinal and hallucinogenic properties.
Combera Sandw. 2 species native to Patagonia: C. paradoxa Sandw. from Argentina and C. minima Sandw., a very rare species endemic to the Chilean province of Valdivia. Dwarf herbaceous perennials – alpine xerophytes. C. paradoxa is an attractive plant meriting cultivation as an ornamental, bearing rosettes of dark green leaves contrasting with pale, fragrant flowers borne in profusion. Corollas white, tinged violet, contrasting with showy, bright yellow stamens and narrow-lobed, hairy, purple calyces.
Fabiana Ruiz & Pav. known as pichi or false heath, 15 species from the Andes.
Nierembergia Ruiz & Pav. cup flowers, 21 species from South America.
Pantacantha Speg. monotypic genus from western Argentina and Patagonia, the single species being Pantacantha ameghinoi Speg., a low, spiny-leaved shrub bearing small, pale yellow, urceolate flowers attractively striated with purple, native to the south of Mendoza Province in western Argentina and also to the Argentinian provinces of Neuquén, Río Negro and Chubut. The small, bell-like flowers and linear leaves give the shrub an Erica-like appearance. Common names in its native Argentina: quila or quilla.
Calibrachoa Cerv. ex La Llave & Lex 32 neotropical species segregated from Petunia.
Petunia Wijsman 18 species from South America.
Plowmania Hunz. & Subils monotypic genus with only 1 species, Plowmania nyctaginoides Hunz. & Subils., endemic to the Montane rainforests of southern Mexico and Guatemala. A small, scandent shrub with large and attractive flame-coloured flowers, cultivated as an ornamental in the United States. First classified as a Brunfelsia. The genus Plowmania is named in honour of ethnobotanist and expert on the genus Brunfelsia, Timothy Plowman.
The Patagonian genera Benthamiella, Combera and Pantacantha merit referral from subfamily Petunioideae to subfamily Goetzeoideae of the Solanaceae.
Ornamental use
The genera Brunfelsia, Plowmania, Fabiana, Nierembergia and Petunia furnish garden plants bearing attractive flowers. Brunfelsia and Plowmania are genera of tropical shrubs requiring glasshouse protection in temperate climate areas; Fabiana species are hardy shrubs; Nierembergia species are dwarf, hardy herbaceous perennials or sub-shrubs, and Petunia × atkinsiana has yielded a huge variety of flower colours, forms and patterns that have made it a favourite summer bedding plant. Petunia is by far the best-known genus of the subfamily in popular temperate zone horticulture.
Species belonging to the genera Brunfelsia, and Petunia have been employed as entheogens in South America, while the species Nierembergia hippomanica has been reported to have toxic and hallucinogen-like effects upon horses and to have similarities in its chemistry to that of the genus Brunfelsia.The chemistry of Nierembergia hippomanica is most unusual for that of a plant belonging to the Solanaceae, in that the species contains phenethylamine proto-alkaloids more usually associated with cacti and grasses: β-Phenylethylamine, N-Methyltyramine, tyramine, and hordenine have been isolated from it. The unusual epithet hippomanica is a compound of the Greek elements ἵππος horse and μανία insanity / frenzy – hence "sending horses insane". Botanist John Miers references in the species name a plant hippomanes of uncertain identity mentioned in the idyll of Theocritus and the works of Theophrastus – so called either because horses were madly fond of it, or because it sent them mad if they fed upon it. The Greek namehippomanes was also referenced in the creation of the genus nameHippomane for an extremely toxic genus in the Euphorbiaceae. Petunia violacea Lindl. has been reported to be used as a hallucinogen in Ecuador, where it has the vernacular nameshanín. The drug is said to cause sensations of levitation and flight – a type of hallucination often associated with the use of the more toxic hallucinogenic plants of the deliriant type, e.g. the tropane-containing Atropa and Hyoscyamus – active constituents of the witches' flying ointments.
