You know about me and tomatoes. My fascination with this plant is almost (almost) absurd, but I just keep finding more reasons to love the tomato. If you've grown tomatoes for very long, you've probably already noticed that they seem to have the ability to trap insects, due to a slightly sticky substance on the "hairs" that grow along the stem. What researchers at the Royal Botanical Gardens Kew found was that the tomato plants weren't just trapping insects: they are actually able to use nutrients from the decomposing insects' bodies to self-fertilize. Researchers also concluded that we don't see this phenomenon all the time in our gardens because the domesticated plants are taking up plenty of nutrients from the soil (because we do baby our tomatoes when we plant them, don't we?) but that, in the wild, they probably trap insects much more frequently.
And it's not just tomatoes. Other formerly "innocent" plants have been found to have this same ability, including potatoes, nicotiana, and petunias.
I loved this quote from the researchers, who published their findings in the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society: "We may be surrounded by many more murderous plants than we think."
Murderous tomatoes. Gotta love it!
Comments
Reminds me a bit of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. Now, if they can just figure out a way to get the tomato plants to eat squirrels before they eat the tomatoes, I’ll be set.
Hi Ryan,
That would be perfect! The squirrels drove me absolutely nuts this year. I swear, they were everywhere (and taking bites out of my favorite tomatoes, too!)
Thanks for stopping by!
for those of you bothered by squirrels eating your tomatoes, next year plant some habanero peppers and when they are green, put 6 in a blender with some water and purify. then strain, add a tsp each of oil and soap to each cup of pepper juice and spray on the tomatoes, repeat after rain. dried pepper powder doesn’t work. for bird feeders, spread the feed on newspaper or baking sheet, spray with pepper juice, dry in the sun and then put in the bird feeder. the pepper doesn’t affect the birds.
I totally love that information. Here I am worried about spraying away all those bugs in our garden. And I have tomato seedlings to think about. I can’t wait until they’re big enough to grab some of those insects on their own. Self fertilization rocks!