Solanum muricatum
species of plant
Solanum muricatum is a South American species of evergreen shrub grown for its sweet edible fruit.
It is known by the Spanish common names of pepino or pepino dulce ('sweet cucumber', differentiating it from cucumber, which is also called pepino). It is also sometimes called pepino melon or melon pear due to its flavor. Another common name, tree melon, is more often used for the papaya.
Description
The fruit resembles a melon (Cucumis melo) in color, and its flavor recalls a succulent mixture of honeydew and cucumber.
The species is a close relative of other nightshades cultivated for their fruit, including the tomato (S. lycopersicum) and the eggplant/aubergine (S. melongena), which its own fruit closely resembles.
Taxonomy
The species was described in 1789 by 18th-century Scottish botanist William Aiton.
Solanum furcatum was also called Solanum muricatum by Bertero based on 19th-century French botanist Michel Félix Dunal.
Distribution and habitat
The pepino dulce is presumed to be native to the temperate Andean regions of Colombia, Peru, and Chile, though it is not known in the wild and the details of its domestication are unknown.
Cultivation
Pepinos were described by early Spanish colonizers as being cultivated on the coast; the Moche Valley in Peru was particularly famous for them.
The public source identifies “Solanum muricatum” as species of plant. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Solanum, muricatum and species.
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Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q135928. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1789.
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This entry incorporates text from “Solanum muricatum” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.