Solanum is a large and diverse genus of flowering plants, which include two food crops of the highest economic importance, the potato and the tomato. It also contains the nightshades and horsenettles, as well as numerous plants cultivated for their ornamental flowers and fruit. Solanum species show a wide range of growing habits, such as annual and perennials, vines, subshrubs, shrubs, and small trees. Many formerly independent genera like Lycopersicon (the tomatoes) and Cyphomandra are now included in Solanum as subgenera or sections. Thus, the genus today contains roughly 1,500-2,000 species.

Solanum giganteum is a South African indigenous species from the Eastern Cape, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo, Mpumalanga, North West and Western Cape Provinces. It is synonymously known as Solanum niveum. Solanum giganteum is a much-branched shrub or small tree upo 6 m high. Branchlets with white, woolly hairs and stout, straight prickles up to 5 mm long. Leaves elliptic, margin entire, large, up to 250 x 90 mm, softly textured, dark green, glabrescent, becoming hairless/smooth above, velvety whitish/silver below; pedicels reflexed in flower, erect in fruit; large bract-like leaves are often present in the axils of the stem leaves. Flowers in many-flowered, branched, dense, terminal corymbs, faintly scented; corolla white, mauve to blue or purple, 15 mm in diameter, anthers yellow. Fruit a smooth, globose berry, 5-10 mm in diameter, green, ripening through orange to bright red, finally purplish red, remaining on the plant for at least six months. Flowers and fruit are often found on the same plant, even in the same inflorescence.