Sat, 19 Oct 2002 14:03:08 -0700 Matthew Montchalin wrote:


I have seen tomato vines sprout 'roots' when lying close to the ground.

But I have never seen the fruit of the tomato sprout 'roots' when
lying close to the ground. Instead, the fruit is more likely to
rot if it comes in contact with the ground. Do you know of any
instances where the fruit of the tomato is the point from which
vines shoot out?

Yes, thanks for bringing up that detail. Past summer I had about 20 tomato
plants on my south wall of the house getting a boosted sunshine from the
reflection off of my south-wall of white paint. Tomatoes love that extra
booster of sunshine and they take-over all of that southern land.

And since the wind is fierce I never bother to stake tomatoes, what I do is
surround each plant with concrete paving blocks as they then will lie on
the block surface but they still throw roots from there stems into the dirt
ground.

We mostly work with hybrid tomatoes but I suspect the wild strains are
even more stem root shooting than the hybrid tomatoes.

Your question brings up an interesting mathematical analysis. We would want
to ask the question of given the predilection of tomato vines in throwing off
roots
on their stems, that what is the probability of a tomato plant having a
mutation
of its genetics such that the tomato fruit itself shoots roots into the
ground and
thus becoming what I hypothesize as the pre-potato plant.

Is that Probability something of the order of 1 success rate in a million
years?
So that the Hypothesis would say that the potato species was a mutated tomato

species some 1 million years ago in South America?

Question: fossilized tomato and potato plants. Which seems to have existed
first?
My Hypothesis would say the tomato existed long before the potato.

Archimedes Plutonium,

Sat, 19 Oct 2002 14:03:08 -0700 Matthew Montchalin wrote:


I have seen tomato vines sprout 'roots' when lying close to the ground.

But I have never seen the fruit of the tomato sprout 'roots' when
lying close to the ground. Instead, the fruit is more likely to
rot if it comes in contact with the ground. Do you know of any
instances where the fruit of the tomato is the point from which
vines shoot out?

Yes, thanks for bringing up that detail. Past summer I had about 20 tomato
plants on my south wall of the house getting a boosted sunshine from the
reflection off of my south-wall of white paint. Tomatoes love that extra
booster of sunshine and they take-over all of that southern land.

And since the wind is fierce I never bother to stake tomatoes, what I do is
surround each plant with concrete paving blocks as they then will lie on
the block surface but they still throw roots from there stems into the dirt
ground.

We mostly work with hybrid tomatoes but I suspect the wild strains are
even more stem root shooting than the hybrid tomatoes.

Your question brings up an interesting mathematical analysis. We would want
to ask the question of given the predilection of tomato vines in throwing off
roots
on their stems, that what is the probability of a tomato plant having a
mutation
of its genetics such that the tomato fruit itself shoots roots into the
ground and
thus becoming what I hypothesize as the pre-potato plant.

Is that Probability something of the order of 1 success rate in a million
years?
So that the Hypothesis would say that the potato species was a mutated tomato

species some 1 million years ago in South America?

Question: fossilized tomato and potato plants. Which seems to have existed
first?
My Hypothesis would say the tomato existed long before the potato.

Archimedes Plutonium,