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 , 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

"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

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.

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

Unless they make a habit of eating plants they don't recognize, they're unlikely to have a problem. Putting poisonous things (eg potato tops, daffodil bulbs) on the compost heap doesn't transfer the poison to to crop plants that are grown with that compost.

Datura stramonium is pretty poisonous, but so are a lot of plants that we deliberately grow in our gardens. I'd be pretty miffed if I found my council tax were to be spent on a vain attempt to rid someone's garden of poisonous plants.

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

wrote in message
...
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


Datura is a common casual plant and often turns up after ditch cleaning or
putting in pipes along roadsides etc. It is not very poisonous compared
with some other garden plants such as Delphiniums (used for arrow poisons)
and Monks'hood. The latter I was once amazed to find a market stall flower
seller, in Bishop's Stortford, selling in bunches, cutting the stalk bases
with a knife and bare hands. She had been selling them all day: from the
poison books she should have rapidly lost the use of her arms! She just
smiled and carried on, when I told her.

http://www.searchnbn.net/gridMap/gri...NSYS0000004044

One plant to be careful of if hemlock water-dropwort, whose leaves do look
rather like flat leaved parsley, and are very poisonous.

S

wrote:

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.

I often find them in the fields when out brushing. A neighbour has one
growing in his garden - but I know where the seed for that came from...

....how it got there is anyone's guess.

And yes, the plant (and seeds) is/are very poisonous, but nothing to get
in a flap about - many seed catalogues include them, as they are
decorative plants and the scent of the flowers is pervasive.

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?

In a word, no.

--
Rusty

"Sacha" wrote in message
...
On 2010-09-18 02:20:50 +0100, said:

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

Derelict or lightly managed gardens are often the last refuge of wild
pla
nts
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
plan
t
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

It doesn't specify the means of ingesting the poison but according to a
page on the RHS, between 1962 and 1978, only 2 people died from plant
poisoning in the whole of Great Britain and Ireland. I assume figures
aren't available since then or that they stand at zero! If you go to the
RHS site there is a list of potentially harmful plants, categorised by
their degree of toxicity. If you read that and avoided every one of them,
you'd give up gardening. ;-) Datura is Catgeory B - harmful if eaten
and so, curiously, is Ricinus which I would have thought would come into
the 'deadly' category if there was one!
--
Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.com
South Devon

They could not have been looking very hard: I would imagine that millions of
people died from tobacco in that period.

Incidentally, one of the more common 'deadly' poisons contained in our
plants is hyocyamine: which you can buy in purified form over the counter in
any supermarket as 'Buscopan'. I use it all too often, and it is not all
that effective for curing stomach cramps either... Probably easier to use
that way than as the less common 'henbane', which stinks, though.

S

Sacha wrote:

/snip/

Datura is Catgeory B - harmful if
eaten and so, curiously, is Ricinus which I would have thought would
come into the 'deadly' category if there was one!

You need a *LOT* of the Ricinus plant - well, IIRC, only the seed - to
make a little of the poison.

--
Rusty

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

Charlie Pridham wrote:

/snip/

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

Consider that he tomato is closely related to the black and red
nightshade. Both the latter are killed by frost, yet they appear with
delightful regularity every year, largely as garden or arable weeds.

I say 'delightfully', as (if I get round to it) I collect loads of black
nightshade berries and with a little sugar and tartaric acid, make pots
and pots of sham blueberry-pie filling.

--
Rusty

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