In article ,
[..Mickie Swall..] wrote...

Really Strange: I have a tomato that the seeds are literally sprouting from
within and
popping out of the skin - see the seven pictures taken on Thursday and another
one just
taken last night
http://www.ofoto.com/AlbumMenu.jsp?U...1_274461001103
(or http://www.ofoto.com my email mickie143@hotmail password: mickie). I've
never seen or
heard of anything like this before, is this freaky or something common that
I've just
never heard of?
I bought this particular tomato at the grocery store, it had been sitting on
the kitchen
counter for at least a week or more... still firm and fresh as the day I
bought it. A few
days ago I noticed the first sprout and thought I'd let it happen just to see
what kind of
plant would develop. The seedling had already broken through the skin of the
tomato, so I
wasn't sure if it was a tomato seed or maybe another kind of seed (birdseed?)
that had
gotten in there somehow. I set the whole tomato on the kitchen windowsil and
misted it
from time to time, but the original seedling dried up. It was then that I
noticed all the
little breen pimples on the rest of the tomato... popped a few of them, and
dang if there
aren't little tomato plants sporuting out of them now.......should I contact
the
Department of Agriculture? Riplely's? Guinness?
(Stephen King?.....nah...he'd never believe it........) g


Sounds like the tomato plant that produced the fruit may have had a
mutation of some sort affecting some of the hormonal mechanisms that
normally inhibit germination of seeds when they are still inside the
fruit.

Precocious germination of seeds when a fruit is still attached to a
mother plant ["vivipary"] sometimes occurs as an abnormality

http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives...6635.Bt.r.html

and is normal in some plants [esp. various mangroves].

http://www.agralin.nl/wda/abstracts/ab1140.html
says regarding tomatos and the plant hormone ABA [abscisic acid]:

"In wild-type seeds embryo-produced ABA is responsible for the
development of dormancy during seed development. ABA-deficient
seeds germinate viviparously in over-ripe fruits. Germination of
wild-type seeds is also inhibited after harvest."

http://hcs.osu.edu/hcs200/notes3.htm [some general lecture
notes on seeds, dormancy etc.]

"Chemical inhibition (physiological dormancy). Chemical inhibitors
to germination (e.g., caffeic acid, coumarin) can be present in the
embryo itself, in the seed coat or in the fruit tissue surrounding
the seed. These compounds must be metabolically inactivated, leached,
degraded or removed in some other way before germination can occur.
For instance, the gelatinous material surrounding a tomato seed
contains an inhibitor which prevents the seed from germinating
inside the fruit. This inhibitor must be removed prior to germination."

http://hort.cabweb.org/SeedSci/Pdfs/ssr08385.pdf

describes precociously-germinating or viviparous mutants of
chinese cabbage, with references about other cases in other
plants including tomato.

"However, detailed studies are limited to maize (Robertson, 1955),
tomato (Groot and Karssen, 1992) and Arabidopsis..."

The cited reference is:

Groot, S. P. C. and C. M. Karssen, 1992. Dormancy and germination
of abscisic acid-deficient tomato seeds: Studies with the _sitiens_
mutant. Plant Physiology 99: 952-958.

Sounds like a similar mutation. If so, it's perhaps
physiologically interesting, but not desirable agriculturally
[Who'd want to eat a tomato full of sprouted tomato seedlings?]

cheers