Originally Posted by Spamlet

"Stewart Robert Hinsley" wrote in message
...
In message , Mike Lyle
writes
They're listed as escapes in the field guides, so they must appear quite
often. This is SRH's territory, but I'd say the climate here isn't
reliably clement enough to guarantee them regular ripening, or reliable
germination the spring after that.

It may well be Nick Maclaren's territory.

URL:http://www.bsbimaps.org.uk/mstetrads...4359.0&sppname
=Solanum lycopersicum&commname=Tomatocountback=0

Botanists don't fossick about in people's gardens, so volunteer tomatoes
are probably more widespread than suggested by the records.

There's a concept known as the rule of tens. Of ever 1000 plants
introduced 100 escape into the wild, 10 become naturalised, and 1 becomes
invasive. For example Zea mays is grown widely, but volunteers are rare,
never mind casual plants in the wild. (That reminds me; I have one record
of the species that I should pass onto the BSBI.)

As luck would have it, I found two feral specimens only yesterday in the
shrubbery at our Friends' Meeting House. These ones were far too small to
have any chance of fruiting before the frosts, but I don't know how they
would have done in a warmer spring than this year's.

URL:Recording

They're rather disease-prone, and also rather hungry and thirsty plants
which probably aren't good competitors. And they're separated by many
generations from the wild forms which might stand a better chance.

You raise the point that the volunteer plants that are being reporting
from gardens are likely from well-fertilised plots with little
competition; that makes is easier for a volunteer tomato to flower and
fruit.
--
Stewart Robert Hinsley

Botanists do fossic around in people's gardens (BSBI News used to be full of
'new species' records from gardens in the Scilly Isles in particular) -
particularly their own - and Kew and Cambridge are often the sites of first
UK records of plants and fungi: simply because that is where there are
plenty of recorders on hand who can identify them, and plenty of odd plants
whose seeds can blow away, or wash down on to the river bank nearby.

Derelict or lightly managed gardens are often the last refuge of wild plants
that have been mown, strimmed, and poisoned away by councils all over the
country, so do look out for anything that turns up: it may be a wild plant
from before your house was built. In our garden for example we have
Potentilla anglica, which only grows in one other known site in the town,
and is endangered by scrub growth there.

S