In my back garden the 'soldiers' grown from last year's fallen tomatoes are
starting to ripen fruit.

From this I presume that they in turn could drop fruit to provide seed for
next year.

So what is there to stop tomatoes becoming naturalised in the UK?
I assume that the current climate is conducive to outdoor tomatoes and the
last winter was certainly pretty harsh.

Although I haven't seen tomatoes growing as weeds in mediteranean areas.

Cheers

Dave R

--
No plan survives contact with the enemy.
[Not even bunny]

Helmuth von Moltke the Elder

(\__/)
(='.'=)
(")_(")

David WE Roberts wrote:
In my back garden the 'soldiers' grown from last year's fallen
tomatoes are starting to ripen fruit.

From this I presume that they in turn could drop fruit to provide
seed for next year.

So what is there to stop tomatoes becoming naturalised in the UK?
I assume that the current climate is conducive to outdoor tomatoes
and the last winter was certainly pretty harsh.

Although I haven't seen tomatoes growing as weeds in mediteranean
areas.
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.

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.

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.

--
Mike.

In message , David WE Roberts
writes
In my back garden the 'soldiers' grown from last year's fallen tomatoes
are starting to ripen fruit.

From this I presume that they in turn could drop fruit to provide seed
for next year.

So what is there to stop tomatoes becoming naturalised in the UK?
I assume that the current climate is conducive to outdoor tomatoes and
the last winter was certainly pretty harsh.

I found a volunteer tomato plant (only about 9 inches high) growing in a
pavement a few weeks back.

Actual naturalisation, rather than local persistence, or the occurrence
of causal plants, would require something to disperse the seeds.

(There's also a 10 or 20 yard colony of a late growing potato in a
roadside verge a few miles away; I'm fairly baffled as to how it got
there.)

Although I haven't seen tomatoes growing as weeds in mediteranean areas.

Cheers

Dave R


--
Stewart Robert Hinsley

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:http://www.botanicalkeys.co.uk/flora/content/record/recording.htm

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

"David WE Roberts" wrote in message
...
In my back garden the 'soldiers' grown from last year's fallen tomatoes
are starting to ripen fruit.

From this I presume that they in turn could drop fruit to provide seed for
next year.

So what is there to stop tomatoes becoming naturalised in the UK?
I assume that the current climate is conducive to outdoor tomatoes and the
last winter was certainly pretty harsh.

Although I haven't seen tomatoes growing as weeds in mediteranean areas.

Cheers

Dave R

They are not indigenous to the UK because the term means they would have had
to have originated here. Lycopersicon, like many of the edible solonaceae,
comes from S America and the Galapogos.

They turn up everywhere people go in the UK and are particularly common
along riverbanks that have sewage farms (as are fig trees). This makes them
'casuals': there would have to be a regular self supporting breeding
population of them in a number of places before they would qualify as
naturalised

However, as you can see from this National Biodiversity Network 'gateway'
distribution map, they are well on the way to being naturalised, and they
are more common than many real native plants:

http://www.searchnbn.net/gridMap/gri...MSYS0000460517

Those really interested in these issues should join the Botanical Society of
the British Isles, and help take part in the fascinating activity of
recording the spread of such plants and the decline of our own. BSBI have
now turned many of their excellent newsletters into pdf form and the amount
of useful information they contain is a wonder in itself.

http://www.bsbi.org.uk/

S

Stewart Robert Hinsley wrote:
In message , David WE Roberts
writes
In my back garden the 'soldiers' grown from last year's fallen
tomatoes are starting to ripen fruit.

From this I presume that they in turn could drop fruit to provide
seed for next year.

So what is there to stop tomatoes becoming naturalised in the UK?
I assume that the current climate is conducive to outdoor tomatoes
and the last winter was certainly pretty harsh.

I found a volunteer tomato plant (only about 9 inches high) growing
in a pavement a few weeks back.

Actual naturalisation, rather than local persistence, or the
occurrence of causal plants, would require something to disperse the
seeds.
(There's also a 10 or 20 yard colony of a late growing potato in a
roadside verge a few miles away; I'm fairly baffled as to how it got
there.)


Some potatoes fall off a lorry, one of them manages to grow, leaves some
tubers in the ground, the next year several grow...

?


Ian

"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:http://www.botanicalkeys.co.uk/flora/content/record/recording.htm

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

In article ,
says...
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:http://www.botanicalkeys.co.uk/flora/content/record/recording.htm

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.

There certainly used to be large stands of "wild" tomatoes along the
banks of the Thames in Berkshire in the late 60's, presumably the result
of many fishermans half eaten sandwiches, but far too much to be from
just one season
--
Charlie Pridham, Gardening in Cornwall
www.roselandhouse.co.uk
Holders of national collections of Clematis viticella cultivars and
Lapageria rosea

Of course, it could be because they are native to South America, so could never have become 'indigenous' to either Europe or Britain.
Indigenous is a different thing altogether from 'naturalised'.
Try using sterilised sewerage sludge as a garden fertiliser and see how many Tomato seedlings you get coming up.

Though if British people stopped eating imported figs, the volunteer fig trees would eventually cease to appear, because British fig trees do not produce viable seed. This is because we do not have suitable insects to pollinate them, which is a very specialist task because of the very curious nature of the enclosed fig flower.

All sorts of plants will self seed in the vicinity of one you planted, but it doesn't mean that they will in general self-propagate in the wild. For example, several volunteer achocha (Cyclanthera pedata, an easily grown and tasty curcurbit, also known as caigua) appeared in the vicinity of the ones I grew last year. But in the ground they didn't germinate until about late May or early June, which was too late in the season to get them sufficiently advanced to fruit and give viable seed. You need to plant them indoors in April to achieve that.

"David WE Roberts" wrote in message
...
In my back garden the 'soldiers' grown from last year's fallen tomatoes
are starting to ripen fruit.

From this I presume that they in turn could drop fruit to provide seed for
next year.

So what is there to stop tomatoes becoming naturalised in the UK?
I assume that the current climate is conducive to outdoor tomatoes and the
last winter was certainly pretty harsh.

Although I haven't seen tomatoes growing as weeds in mediteranean areas.


Hmmm....the definition of indigenous from Wikipedia is interesting.

"In biogeography, a species is defined as native to a given region or
ecosystem if its presence in that region is the result of only natural
processes, with no human intervention. Every natural organism (as opposed to
a domesticated organism) has its own natural range of distribution in which
it is regarded as native. Outside this native range, a species may be
introduced by human activity; it is then referred to as an introduced
species within the regions where it was anthropogenically introduced.

An indigenous species is not necessarily endemic. In biology and ecology,
endemic means exclusively native to the biota of a specific place. An
indigenous species may occur in areas other than the one under
consideration.

The terms endemic and indigenous do not imply that an organism necessarily
originated or evolved where it is found."

So if this is correct, to be indigenous the tomato would have to have
arrived by natural means which kind of answers my original question - not
that it was quite what I meant.
Unless of course there are migratory birds which carry tomato seeds in their
gut and deposit them here.

So I was obviously wondering why it wasn't growing wild without direct human
assistance.
Apparently it is.

Thanks for the interesting discussion :-)

--
No plan survives contact with the enemy.
[Not even bunny]

Helmuth von Moltke the Elder

(\__/)
(='.'=)
(")_(")

echinosum wrote:
[...]

All sorts of plants will self seed in the vicinity of one you planted,
but it doesn't mean that they will in general self-propagate in the
wild. For example, several volunteer achocha (Cyclanthera pedata, an
easily grown and tasty curcurbit, also known as caigua) appeared in
the vicinity of the ones I grew last year. But in the ground they
didn't germinate until about late May or early June, which was too
late in the season to get them sufficiently advanced to fruit and
give viable seed. You need to plant them indoors in April to achieve
that.

Sounds fascinating. Did you get seed from The Real Seed Catalogue? Which
variety? Any dos and don'ts?

--
Mike.

On 16 Sep, 23:06, "Spamlet" wrote:
"Stewart Robert Hinsley" wrote in ...

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.

Our local rag is reporting a gardener finding devil's trumpet (datura
stramonium) and "contacting ... Council to arrange for the plant to be
removed" as it "contains dangerous levels of poison". However,
Googling it reveals you can buy it on eBay from what look like
professional sellers, so presumably it can't be that bad and this is
largely a press scare story.

But it does raise the question as to whether there have been any
occurances of gardeners chucking an unrecognised poisonous volunteer
on the compost heap and being seriously harmed then or a year later
when ingesting their next crop?

Chris

In message
,
writes
On 16 Sep, 23:06, "Spamlet" wrote:
"Stewart Robert Hinsley" wrote in
...

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.

Our local rag is reporting a gardener finding devil's trumpet (datura
stramonium) and "contacting ... Council to arrange for the plant to be
removed" as it "contains dangerous levels of poison". However,
Googling it reveals you can buy it on eBay from what look like
professional sellers, so presumably it can't be that bad and this is
largely a press scare story.

Datura stramonium (I know it as thorn apple) is one of the more
poisonous plants around. But people also grow Ricinus communuis,
Brugmansia suaveolons and Nerium oleander as ornamentals, and they may
be worse.
People use the seeds of Abrus precatorius to make jewellery.

But it does raise the question as to whether there have been any
occurances of gardeners chucking an unrecognised poisonous volunteer
on the compost heap and being seriously harmed then or a year later
when ingesting their next crop?

There might be exceptions (perhaps aminopyralid) but toxic chemicals are
generally broken down in compost heaps. People compost things like
rhubarb leaves, and potato and tomato tops

Chris

--
Stewart Robert Hinsley

On Thu, 16 Sep 2010 19:20:43 +0100, "David WE Roberts"
wrote:

In my back garden the 'soldiers' grown from last year's fallen tomatoes are
starting to ripen fruit.

From this I presume that they in turn could drop fruit to provide seed for
next year.

So what is there to stop tomatoes becoming naturalised in the UK?
I assume that the current climate is conducive to outdoor tomatoes and the
last winter was certainly pretty harsh.

The weather mainly.

Had seedling tomatoes appear in the greenhouse on the allotment last
year that I hadn't planted so I'd assumed they'd grown from some old
tomatoes that had rotted before I got the plot.



Although I haven't seen tomatoes growing as weeds in mediteranean areas.

Cheers

Dave R
--
http://www.bra-and-pants.com
http://www.holidayunder100.co.uk