Tomato – Lycopersicon esculentum

Common Name: Tomato

Botanical Name: Lycopersicon esculentum, ly-ko-PER-si-kon es-ku-LEN-tum

Decorative Life: Life of bedding plant can be for a few weeks.

Flower Color: Yellow

Availability: Spring, Summer

Irrigating with water containing very low levels of chlorine (2-8 ppm) can cause significant growth reductions with some cultivars. Plants grown under high relative humidity (90-95%) produced more dry weight than when grown under lower humidity (55-60%).

• As a member of the Solanaceae (nightshade family), it has as common relatives pepper, eggplant, potato and petunia among many others.
• Native to Western South America, Galapagos.

• Foliage is course, aromatic and hairy. Stems upright or scrambling, often rooting at nodes.
• Flowers up to 12 per cluster, less than 1 inch in diameter.
• Fruit shape from globose to elongated and many forms in between, red or yellow when ripe, from less than an inch to many inches in diameter.

Plugs can be stored for 3 weeks in the dark (3 weeks in light) at 45F and subsequently grown into very acceptable plants and/or flowers.

• From Greek “lykos” for wolf and “persikon” for peach; probably referring to the fruit’s inferiority to the peach.
• Some exotic diseases of citrus that involve small, single-stranded RNA molecules called viroids, can be transmitted to this species.