In article , wrote...
In article ,
mel turner wrote:

Mel, you are posting a lot of really neat refs. Thanks! I'll have
to try to find some of these papers when I get time.

Me too.

Whoever named the section Petota and the subgenus Potatoe must have
been snickering as he typed!

So, maybe Dan Quayle was correctly spelling the subgenus name?
Who knew he was so well-informed on matters concerning vegetables...?

I found the abstract below particularly interesting in that I always
thought the eggplant (S.melongena) originated in India.

I'd vaguely thought it might be from North Africa, but

http://waynesword.palomar.edu/ecoph21.htm and
http://www.museums.org.za/bio/plants..._melongena.htm
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/BODY_CV124
http://www.mobot.org/education/05act...egetables.html
etc.

do all say "Asia", so you seem to be right..

Anyway, I think that's not really a contradiction-- they
just seem to be saying that the whole group of African or
Asian species that eventually gave rise to the cultivated
eggplant [in Africa or Asia] would ultimately have been
derived from tropical American ancestors at some point in
the remote past. [I haven't checked their reasoning, but
it probably follows from their identifying the early branches
of the major clades as all being strictly South American.]

I guess
Solanums are the veggies of Gondwanaland. This would make it a
really old genus, antedating the south Atlantic Ocean. No wonder
it's so huge.

That conclusion seems unnecessary. The group could have
arisen much more recently, and dispersed and radiated
from wherever its place of origin happened to be. In fact,
they seem to argue for just this, since they speak of
New World ancestors, and not Gondawanaland ancestry.

TI: Implications for the phylogeny, classification, and biogeography
of Solanum from cpDNA restriction site variation.
AU: Olmstead-Richard-G {a}; Palmer-Jeffrey-D
SO: Systematic-Botany. 1997; 22 (1) 19-29..
AB: A phylogenetic analysis of Solanum based on chloroplast DNA
restriction site variation confirms previous findings that
Lycopersicon and Cyphomandra are derived from within Solanum. Three
out of four Solanum subgenera with more than one representative in
this analysis (Minon, Potatoe, Solanum) are found to be polyphyletic,
suggesting that the subgeneric classification of the genus needs
revision. Subgenus Leptostemonum is monophyletic within the context
of our sampling. Three primary clades can be distinguished within
Solanum. Clade I includes representatives of sections Archaesolanum,
Dulcamara, Holophylla, Jasminosolanum, and Solanum. Clade II includes
members of subgenus Potatoe (sections Basarthrum, Lycopersicon, and
Petota). Clade III includes all representatives sampled from subg.
Leptostemonum, sects. Allophyllum, Brevantherum, Geminata,
Pseudocapsocum, and Cyphomandropsis, and species formerly assigned to
Cyphomandra. Solanum as a whole and each of the three primary
clades appear to be New World in origin. Within Leptostemonum, African
and Australian members are derived from New World ancestors.

cheers