An annual herb or short-lived soft-wooded shrub to 1 m tall, cultivated for its large edible fruit; cultivated forms lack prickles (except for a few soft ones on calyx), elsewhere forms with prickles occur; all parts sparsely or densely pubescent with stellate hairs (sessile or stalked porrect-stellate), glandular hairs not obvious, aspect grey or purplish-green.

Leaves to 20cm long and 10 cm wide, ovate or ovate-oblong, entire or with 5–9 shallow sinuate lobes, lobes and sinuses rounded, base unequal, petiole 2–8 cm long.

Inflorescence a single, large, hermaphrodite flower below a short raceme of few, smaller, male flowers; in domesticated plants male flowers may be lacking on some or all inflorescences; flowers frequently multi-partite with 5–7 lobes and anthers. Hermaphrodite flower: pedicel 1.5–3 cm long, relatively stout, soon deflexed. Calyx tube 5 mm long; lobes 1–1.5 cm long, oblong-lanceolate, tapering into acumens 3–5 mm long, with a few soft prickles. Corolla 3–4 cm diam., broadly stellate. Filaments 3–4 mm long; anthers 5–7 mm long, oblong, stout, erect. Ovary pubescent at summit with stellate hairs; style 1–1.5 cm long, erect, stout; stigma terminal. Male flower: peduncle 2–4 cm long with 1–5 flowers; pedicel 1–1.5 cm long, slender. Calyx tube to 5 mm long; lobes 5–8 mm long, triangular. Corolla 3–3.5 cm diam., broadly stellate. Filaments 2–3 mm long; anthers 5–6 mm long, oblong, erect. Ovary, style and stigma vestigial or absent.

Fruiting pedicel massive, deflexed, berry 10–20 cm long, globose, obovate or oblong, glabrous, usually dark shining-purple, pale forms are known, flesh pale. Seeds 3–4 mm long, numerous, flattened, sub-reniform, pale yellow to light brown. n = 12, 18, 24 Fedorov (1969).

No attempt will be made here to cover the horticultural aspects of this species. It is now grown as a vegetable in most of the warmer areas of the world. The fruits vary greatly in size and shape and colour. It has become popular in some home gardens to graft eggplant onto S. chrysotrichum stock to produce a perennial eggplant.

An account of eggplant domestication may be found in R.N. Lester & S.M.Z. Hasan: Origin and domestication of the Brinjal Eggplant, Solanum melongena from S. incanum, in Africa and Asia. In J. G. Hawkes et al. Solanaceae III Royal Bot. Gard. Kew (1991). A later paper, T.L.Weese & L.Bohs: Eggplant origins: out of Africa, into the Orient. Taxon 59: 49-56 (2010), uses molecular data to show eggplant origins in Africa and subsequent dispersal to the Middle East and Asia.

Because cultivated plants are often lacking the male flowers and also often lacking prickles on all but the calyx, care should be taken in keying out this species.