24 Oct 2002 03:35:16 GMT mel turner wrote:

In article , wrote...
[snip]

As far as I know the majority view is that Lycopersicon is an
independent
genus. However it certainly is not cast in stone. There have been, and
likely still are, those who regard the tomato and potato as belonging to
the
same genus

Indeed, that is the current classificatory trend. The tomato group
is nested very deep in a much larger _Solanum_ clade. It would be hard
to recognize it as a separate genus [doing so would seem to require
breaking the rest of Solanum up into many small genera]. Recent
researchers include not only tomatoes but also the "tree tomato"
'Cyphomandra betacea' and its kin in the genus Solanum.

http://newcrop.hort.purdue.edu/newcr...ee_tomato.html
http://www.crfg.org/pubs/ff/tamarillo.html
[links illustrating "tree tomatoes"]

I believe the Tomato is Solanum and not Lycopersicon.

Or, "Lycopersicon" is a name that was applied to one particular
small subgroup of _Solanum_.

I believe this because
I hypothesize that some million/s of years ago the Tomato plants of South
America, a few of them gained a mutation. And this mutation of a few tomato
plants had the tomato fruit buried in the soil so that the fruit became a tuber.

No. Tomatoes and potatoes are indeed fairly closely related to one
another within the huge genus _Solanum_, but the potato tuber is a
modified underground stem, not a fruit. Cultivated potatoes still
do flower and fruit [but many varieties set few fruit], and the
fruits do still look like small greenish tomatoes. Tomatoes and the
potato fruits develop from the ripened ovaries of the flowers, but
the potato tubers develop from whole branch shoots. It's a stem,
not a fruit.

http://waynesword.palomar.edu/vege1.htm

http://www.plantkingdom.com/kingdom/...ae/solanum.htm
http://www.plantkingdom.com/kingdom/...e/lycprscn.htm
http://newcrop.hort.purdue.edu/newcr...99/v4-379.html

And thus was born the first creation of the potato plant.

And since Potato plant is a Solanum, then obviously the tomato is a Solanum.

And so is the eggplant and a great many other plant species
including herbs, shrubs, woody vines and even some moderate-sized
trees. Some _Solanum_ species are common weeds, and a few are
cultivated ornamentals. Most are tropical.

http://pi.cdfa.ca.gov/weedinfo/SOLANUMC2.html
http://pi.cdfa.ca.gov/weedinfo/SOLANUMB2.htm
list some weeds

Question: do the Paleontologists have any fossil record of the tomato and
potato?

Don't know. The following site indicated "no records found"
for a search on "Solanum"

http://ibs.uel.ac.uk/ibs/palaeo/pfr2/pfr.htm

If there is any fossil record for members of this group, it may well
just be of fossil pollen grains, which would tell you very little
about tubers.

Does the tomato exist further back in time than the potato? My guess is yes
considering the above Hypothesis.

And one should be able to duplicate the experiment that Nature already did. One
should be able to find a *wild tomato* and by testing thousands of these wild
tomatoes one should be able to find one of these wild-tomatoes place its fruit
into the ground and become a *tuber*.

There are several wild species of tomatoes and also various wild
species of potatoes. Several of the wild potatoes do form tubers. The
tubers again are modified stems, not fruits. The many wild potato
species also flower and form small tomato-like berries on their
above-ground branches.

http://www.grida.no/cgiar/awpack/diversit.htm
http://ethesis.helsinki.fi/julkaisut...roduction.html
http://plants.gardenbed.com/65/6421_edi.asp
http://www.zum.de/stueber/ross/potato/herbarium_Ia.html
http://www.zum.de/stueber/ross/potato/herbarium_Ib.html
http://www.zum.de/stueber/ross/potato/herbarium_II.html
http://www.zum.de/stueber/ross/potat...arium_III.html
http://www.zum.de/stueber/ross/potato/supplement_A.html
[lists of wild potato collections]

other misc. links.
http://www.ecpgr.cgiar.org/Workgroup...solanaceae.htm
http://newcrop.hort.purdue.edu/newcr...99/v4-379.html
http://www.keil.ukans.edu/delta/angio/www/solanace.htm
http://www.ume.maine.edu/PAA/abstramgen2001.htm
http://www.ars-grin.gov/ars/MidWest/NR6/ar99.html

cheers

Thanks for that well-informed response.

Question: how far away are we from getting a entire genome project on
the *wild potato* and *wild tomato* plus all the other Solanum species?
Are we 50 years away from getting that data?

My hypothesis is that once the data is available that the wild potato and wild
tomato genomes are the closest-matching genomes of all the Solanum species.

We do have genetic data on all the primates and the Human genetics closest-
match is the chimpanzee.

So my theory is that as close as Human genetics matches chimpanzees of all the
primates, that the wild-potato matches the closest with the wild-tomato of all of
the Solanum species.

Archimedes Plutonium,
whole entire Universe is just one big atom where dots
of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies