Edible fruit. Honey nectar plants.

Herb or shrub up to c. 1 m high, in cultivation usually unarmed (wild plants may be prickly), but occasionally with scattered prickles, floccose-pubescent with stellate hairs, especially on younger parts. Leaves alternate, all of approximately the same size, only decreasing in size near the top; petiole 2–5 cm long; blade elliptic to ovate, 14–18 x 3–11 cm, base truncate to subcordate, often obliquely so, margin ± deeply lobed, softly stellate-pubescent on both sides, but mostly beneath, occasionally with prickles along the midrib. Inflorescence lateral, raceme-like, few-flowered, or flowers solitary; the basal flower bisexual and much larger than the functionally male flowers; peduncle obsolete, the first flower at the base of the 3–5 cm long rachis; pedicels 1–1.5 cm long, elongating in fruit to 7–10 cm. Calyx stellate-pubescent, 1–1.7 cm long in flower, enlarging to 4 cm or more in fruit; lobes narrowly triangular to almost linear. Corolla bluish violet, 1.5–4 cm in diam. in bisexual flowers, less in functionally male flowers, campanulate-stellate. Anthers c. 7 mm long, subsessile. Style in bisexual flowers only, hardly exceeding the anthers. Fruit variable in color, shape and size, usually dark purple, occasionally almost white but eventually becoming yellow or brown, globose to ovoid, up to 20 cm long. Seeds brown. Flowering from March-December.

Cultivated places, farms and gardens.