365 Urban Species. #309: Tomato

[urbpan]

Urban species #309: Tomato Lycopersicon esculentum
Photo by urbpan. Location: River Road, Brookline.

This plant's location--behind a business, in the parking area--suggests to me that it grew from discarded food. A slice of tomato picked out of a sandwich and tossed into the bushes seems to have grown into a plant. It's flowering, and so may provide some late-flying bees with some nourishment. However, the chances that it will produce fruit that will survive to allow the plant to reproduce are slim. New England temperatures will undoubtedly plummet some time before tomatoes ripen on this plant.

Tomato, like all members of Solanaceae, the nightshade family, is native to the New World (probably, in the tomato's case, the western coast of South America). It was introduced to North America through a circuitous route, by way of Europe. It was considered a poisonous ornamental by many Europeans, diffusion of knowledge being rather imperfect at the time. Like other nightshades, including potato, the green parts of the plant are toxic. It isn't unheard of for tomato to grow wild as a weed; this individual was the second that I've encountered, the first was on a landfill heap. The plant is a bit too fragile to be a common urban weed in Northern climes, where it dies back completely, but in warmer places tomato is a perennial, and may survive for years in waste areas.





Exactly two weeks later, I took this picture:

Comments

[aplomada.livejournal.com]

I once found a "feral" tomato plant as well. I have to wonder though: They kept it as an ornamental? They're not particularly attractive plants and the flowers aren't showy. Maybe they thought the red ripe fruit was ornamental?

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Yes, the fruit was the ornamental part of it--yellow, orange, or red, from the size of berries to the size of apples, round, pear-shaped, or bulbous. Thomas Jefferson apparently grew it ornamentally.