Thanks Shule, i was under the impression that Solanum (or perhaps rather lycopersicon) cheesmanii was the old outdated name and S. cheesmaniae and S. galapagense are the new split species. I'll have to double check the packets of seed from TGRC and GRIN, but i think they both use cheesmaiae. But thanks! I'll double check.

Yeah, S. galapagense is indeed very different from the other form. It has a very frilly leaf form which i write like. But the leaves are very smelly with a weird smell and the fruits small orange and hairy. I wouldn't be surprised if white fly didn't like them. Some of the other wild tomato species might also have whitefly resistance. I'll need to do more research on that.

The things I'm seeing now are making it look like Solanum cheesmanii was never an official name, but rather a mistake, but that S. galapagense did come from S. cheesmaniae (and S. cheesmaniae is still around with the same name as it used to have). Am I understanding this correctly? The link looks like it implies that cheesmanii is a masculine name, while the founder was female.

Good Question,

From this TGRC link show that "L. cheesmanii" was the old name and my understanding from reading is that at that time both were thought to be the same "cheesmanii" species, with the galapagense form being called and referred to as "L. cheesmanii f. minor". L. cheesmanii then became Solanum cheesmaiae (i guess to fix the latin naming from of male vs female naming conventions) and to go along with the newly restructured solanum genus to include tomatoes from genetic testing. Here is another TGRC link.

also, it looks like the photo i copied from the old wikipedia / wikispecies under S. cheesmaniae is actually a photo of S. galapagense, so i need to fix that pronto.

I remember reading some papers about which species is derived from which. I think one paper said that contrary to most belief a study they did on the genetic diversity in both species (despite both being very closely related) showed that galapagense actually had more diversity and more ancient dna and may have moved from the east island to the west islands instead of what they had thought before and that cheesmaniae might have been the derived species instead of the other way around. I need to find that paper again as it was VERY interesting stuff. Thanks for reminding me of that. That would be great info to put on the wiki if i can find it again...

Shule,

looks like i was wrong in my last comment. (well, sort of anyway). I guess it's still complex and unknown completely.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5309213/

Shule, i found the paper on whitefly resistance. Apparently it is ONLY found in S. galapagense and NOT in S. cheesmaniae despite both being very similar and closely related.

I just edited my page about cheesmaniae a lot. If you want to help track down sources of scholarly articles with Google Scholar search we can add info and sources of other information like disease resistance to the wiki.

https://biolumo.com/index.php?title=Tomato_Breeding_Database/Solanum_cheesmaniae

Shule, and others, i have some basic pages with photos and info for some of the wild tomato species. Feel free to edit the info if it is incorrect or if you are good at formatting. This is just a start. It all is still in rough shape. i don't even have info for some of the others yet.

biolumo.com/index.php?title=Tomato_Breeding_Database/Solanum_pennellii

biolumo.com/index.php?title=Tomato_Breeding_Database/Solanum_cheesmaniae

biolumo.com/index.php?title=Tomato_Breeding_Database/Solanum_galapagense

biolumo.com/index.php?title=Tomato_Breeding_Database/Solanum_sitiens

biolumo.com/index.php?title=Tomato_Breeding_Database/Solanum_lycopersicoides

I'm not an expert on formatting wikis nicely with sidebars and fancy stuff (I know basics, like adding categories, adding sources with <ref> tags through the extension that offers it, link—on-site and off-site—, headings, bold, italics, pre-formatted text, etc.)

However, I do administer a MediaWiki site (it's not about plants). I've personally mostly used it for creating structure (article pages, categories, etc.) and adding data (names, dates, authors, sources, and files) rather than for writing and formatting paragraph-based articles, though. So, what you have looks pretty nice to me, as far as I can tell. :) If you describe what kinds of things you mean more specifically, that might be good (it could teach me more what people are expecting from traditional wikis, these days).

Oh, basic wiki editing is really all i meant. Basic typography so that the text flows with appropriate spacing, adding basic paragraph headings when appropriate, adding in information when lacking, rearranging or rephrasing sentences to sound better, etc. Just simple stuff like that really. And finding and citing sources. Yes, that would all be fine and a great help. If you have nothing to contribute, that's perfectly fine as well. (though i'm not sure if the <ref> tag works on my wiki as some stuff works and some stuff does not. I just have a basic references section with links to appropriate articles that should work better than nothing and i'm fine with that).

added preliminary pages for S. peruvianum and S. habrochaites. Very rough shape right now. just a few photos no information summary yet.

Do you grow lots of wild tomatoes? I've grown S. cheesmaniae (maybe I've also grown S. pimpinellifolium), but that's about it.

yes, i've just started to this last summer. I just made a blog post about some of them on my blog (keen101.wordpress.com). S. cheesmaniae is pretty interesting, S. galapagense is even more interesting, S. pimpinellifolium is boring to me and taste bland contrary to "bursting with flavor" as others have said. maybe it's my soil. But some of the other wild tomatoes like S. pennellii are VERY interesting! I'm hoping to grow S. sitiens and S. lycopersicoides this next summer! They are rare in the world of tomatoes (even wild tomatoes) as they have scented flowers!

Awesome blog you have there!

I'm guessing my S. cheesmaniae isn't pure, either (I was reading what you said in your blog about the ones sold by vendors). The fruits are marble-sized. Are they supposed to be smaller? Whatever the case, it's probably the earliest tomato I've ever grown—so, I'm not disappointed with it. Last year, it only took two months, one week, and two days from planting the seeds to having fruit that were turning yellow. I direct-seeded them in 4-gallon containers. The leaves and vines are small. They branch quickly. They're prolific (all season) and very indeterminate, but the plants remain small, due to the thin stems and smaller leaves. They're kind of bushy due to how many suckers grow (but not a tall bushy). They're heat and cold tolerant. They're not of a size to repel cats (kind of the opposite of Matina there). Big, leafy tomato plants tend to deter cats from entering a tomato patch.

The plants I grew in 2017 were from seeds I saved in 2015. The only apparent difference I noted between my 2015 and 2017 growouts was that the 2017 fruits tasted a lot better. They tasted good before, though. It could just be the sun difference. I think the UV index was higher in 2017.

Someone should cross a PL plant with a pure S. cheesmaniae plant, and breed a new PL variety. I'm curious what the leaves would look like, if they were still small.

Well to be honest i haven't grown them enough yet to know what the diversity is in S. Cheesmaniae.

What you have could be pure actually hard to say but your description sounds accurate. The way you would know for sure is by the size of the seeds. If the seeds are miniscule and tiny they might be pure. If they are seeds the size as regular tomatoes then no.

I didn't like the way i phrased that part of my blog post so i may edit it to reword it. I also bought some terrior seeds again to compare again just in case i was wrong. S. Cheesmaniae does have cool foliage and also has lots of genetic diversity within it as a species so it is possible it is pure.

Yeah that would be way cool! I have a F2 Self-incompatible S. Pennelli plant inside that refuses to set fruit from self pollination. It happens to be a potato leaf. The only pollen available is a S. Galapagense plant i happen to have inside as well (that germinated accidentally from seed from last year that did not germinate). I am attempting to use S. Galapagense pollen to set fruit on the f2 pennellii hybrid.

Since you know your wild tomatoes, can you tell me if the leaf-type for the Stick tomato comes from a wild species? I had never seen anything like it in a tomato before.

Well, i'm still learning about the wilds myself. I have not grown Stick myself, but i'm fairly sure that line was a mutagenic line from x-rays or chemical mutagens. I have grown 'CHARTREUSE MUTANT' which had a growth habit very similar to reported 'Stick'.

I just added maps for each of the wild species from the TGRC google maps to the wiki.

I found something that is probably the origin of the Stick or Curl tomato. If so, it is a mutation, but it looks like a natural one, unless they're omitting information. (But it was an experimental station growing it; so, maybe you're right.)

I guess this TV thread has more insights.

That's interesting. I had seen "Poodle" accessions in TGRC database, but i did not know they might be the same as "Stick". Though, reading about them from TGRC directly seems to cast doubt on that.

http://tgrc.ucdavis.edu/Misc-stocks%20list%202015.pdf

LA4424 ‘Poodle’ syndrome from S. lycopersicoides.

http://tgrc.ucdavis.edu/data/acc/AccDetail.aspx?AccessionNum=LA4424

'poodle' syndrome: greatly foreshortened internodes, thick stems, with abundant aerial roots; highly sterile; originated from crosses to S. lycopersicoides LA2408, but probably a novel variant.
Categories: Prebred
Accession year: 2008

I have no idea what "poodle syndrome" actually is, but this listing says that it is from Solanum lycopersicoides and thus would not agree with that TV thread you linked to of marglobe and whatever domestic ancestry.

If you really want to find out, why don't you write the TGRC directly and ask them about it. I'm sure they would know! We could create a listing for STICK on the tomato genetics wiki if you want after you find out more!

Here are two photos of S. lycopersicoides. Do you think the leaf pattern from them is similar to STICK?

according to tatianas tomato base:

http://t.tatianastomatobase.com/wiki/Stick

History

• Developed by Young, P. A., Tomato Disease Laboratory, Agricultural Experimental Station, Jacksonville, Texas. In Jour. of Hered. 46:243-244, 1955, P. A. Young describes a dominant mutant which he termed Cu or Curl and which he located in 1953 as a mutant on a plant of the Stokesdale variety. Because the vines are distinctly non-suckering in type, Gleckler Seedsmen of Metamora, Ohio, listed Cu in 1959 as Stick.
• USDA PI 330725. Listed as Curl. Donated to USDA in 1968, from United States.
• SSE TOMATO 361.

Shule, here's an idea... why don't you write a nicely worded letter to the TGRC and see if they would be nice enough and willing to send you a sample of one of the "Poodle" tomatoes for you to study. You could also grow 'STICK' and 'CHARTREUSE MUTANT' and poodle side by side and take pictures and do a mini research project. I would be interested in your findings. :)

It's hard to tell how similar the leaf type is from the picture, but I'm guessing it's halfway similar. Maybe a rugose-leaved variety crossed with S. lycopersicoides might look similar to Stick.

Is this species where the anthocyanin genes came from? I know I've heard of them coming from S. cheesmaniae, but I've never seen S. cheesmaniae with anthocyanin on its skin.

From what I've read no, though almost. This species was attempted to cross blue fruit into domestic tomatoes but it had a chromosome that got inverted and was sterile. So no.

Blue tomatoes take one gene for low expression of anthocyanin fruits from S. Chilense. Then they took stronger anthocyanin genes in foliage from S. Cheesmaniae. And when combined i guess got a plant with stronger expressed blue fruits.

anthocyanin genetics would be a good one to create info for on the wiki at some point. I've been trying to iron out the wild tomatoes first, but in general i think i've made great progress on them.

Why doesn't anyone seem to sell most of the wild tomato species out there? Are they tough to germinate or grow?

Which kinds have you grown? How do you like the flavors?

I'm very interested in obtaining seeds from the most fruitful/early/hardy kinds, but I'd rather buy them, trade for them, or something—at present (in the future I might like to approach gene banks and such, but I probably better not, yet).

What are your thoughts on the Menehune tomato? Do you think it's really Lycopersicon succentrianum? Does that species exist? I grew Menehune last year, and it seemed fairly like a domestic tomato breed (granted, an unusual one). It wasn't a favorite for me, though, due to how the fruits got damaged quickly after ripening, and how it dropped blossoms when it first got hot for a while.

Do you think Texas Wild Cherry was just a ferral domestic tomato? I grew that one in 2015. It didn't seem wild to me, either. I'm not sure what to look for, though.

Do you think the Wild Florida Everglades, Spoon, and Matt's Wild Cherry are really pure S. pimpinellifolium? What pure S. pimpinellifolium breeds do you know about?

Good questions. Probably because up until now there hasn't been much interest in wild tomatoes from the general public and because they come from south america and had to be collected by scientists. Most of the wild tomatoe species don't exactly have tasty edible fruits, though according to Joseph Lofthouse some of them might like S. peruvianum when fully ripe. I'm just getting started so i havn't tasted very many. I have grown S. pimpinellifolium and they tasted bland to me. I have grown S. cheesmaniae and i didn't get to taste them as there were not many ripe ones this last year, priority was trying to save seed. S. galapagense i only got like 4 fruits and i don't know if the seeds will germinate again from those, hopefully they will and will be more productive this year, again didn't taste them really. S. pennellii hybrids i tasted because i had ABUNDANT large cherry-sized fruits. They tasted pretty bad, sortof like a green unripe squash. I am optimistic good tasting fruits can be selected for in future generations. S. habrochaites and S. peruvianum are similar in many ways, though i don't think i tasted fruits this last summer. A fern-leaf domestic tomato x S. habrochaites tomato joseph sent me had trouble setting fruits because it seemed to have recovered self-incompatibility genes, but there were a few fruits very late in the season, didn't taste them because i harvested them after a snowstorm and the fruits were wrinkled as i did not know they were there. Joseph says some of his habrochaites hybrids taste pretty good. And in his opinion taste better than some domestic tomatoes already! I tried adding S. chilense but they never flowered in my garden.

This summer i am planning on growing S. sitiens and S. lycopersicoides as they are unique even in the wild tomato family for having scented flowers. I hope to include their genetics in the big wild tomato project thingy that is developing over on the Alan Bishop Homegrown Goodness Plant Breeding forum, and to some extent the permies forum. You are more than welcome to join us over there and follow our discussions. I'm sure at some point someone involved can/will trade or gift you some wild tomato and hybrid seed should you wish. I can't just yet as i'm first working on increasing seed before sharing. But i do share a little seed with Joseph, who then generally shares seed with others before i am able to. I sent him some pure S. cheesmaniae and S. galapagense seed last summer and he grew some out. His selection of S. galapagense this year germinated quicker due to him not treating his seed before planting.

Yeah, some of the wild tomatoes have trouble germinating, but can be coaxed to with a 50% bleach 50% water treatment for 30min-60min, and then rinsed before immediate planting.

There are a few seed companies that sell wild tomatoes. Maybe i should put that on the wiki. These are the ones off the top of my head:

Sacred Succulents from California sells Solanum chilense.

Peace Seeds (or maybe Peace Seedlings) from Oregon sells some wild tomatoes such as pimpinellifolium, habrochaites, and maybe chilense. Along with a few with wild tomato ancestry, and centerflor tomatoes that produce 100 tomatoes per truss.

http://www.chileflora.com/Florachilena/FloraEnglish/HighResPages/EH1974.htm

sells Solanum lycopersicoides, but is out of seed right now. Not a seed company exactly, but a preservation organization.

i think there is a seed company in Europe that sells peruvianum seeds but i cant remember right now. I'll have to scour my bookmarks.

oh, and of course Joseph Lofthouse directly. http://garden.lofthouse.com/seed-list.phtml

i haven't really grown that many domestic tomato varieties due to most failing miserably in my garden. Thus partly why i am interested in wild tomato genomes and breeding my own that thrive here. I live a 5000' elevation, we have intense sunlight with extra UV that gets through, we have dry wind that sucks moisture out of the air and soil in summer. We have cool nights in spring and fall. I have somewhat clayish soil and the pH is probably not ideal, but whatever. Rather than spending massive amounts of time amending my soil i am going the genetics route to select for those that thrive here instead. A long-term solution rather than short term.

Menehune tomato looks like a domestic tomato to me, and the CGN now lists it as Solanum lycopersicum, so domestic tomato. Texas Wild Cherry probably is just a hardy feral domestic tomato, who knows if it has pimp. ancestry. Wild Florida Everglades, Spoon, and Matt's Wild Cherry might be pure currant tomatoes, but then again might not. True currant tomatoes like the ones i got from Peace Seeds had a very low branching growth habit that covered the ground and stretched and grew horizontal rather than vertical. The leaf shape was also unique and small leaves that did not have ruffles, they were smooth spade-like. Most similar to true S. cheesmaniae. VERY similar. I would not be surprised if S. cheesmaniae is decended from pimp. or if pimp. was introgressed years and years ago with some ancestor of galapagense and S. cheesmaniae was born. There are a few S. pimpinellifolium found on the Galapagos Islands. If you want pure pimpinellifolium, try Peace Seeds, they are pretty good at making sure their seeds are good. For other species, go visit Joseph's website or come talk with him on the other forums i mentioned above.

Shule, you might find this link interesting for TGRC's recommendations for cultivating wild tomato species. http://tgrc.ucdavis.edu/spprecommed.aspx

Thanks for all that information and those links. :) That should be extremely helpful.

Although my area probably isn't as inhospitable for domestic tomatoes as yours is, a lot of what you say sounds familiar. I live near some high deserts, but I'm in a near-desert steppe climate. My soil is clay loam (some of it is more like pure clay); it was a farmer's field with probably decent soil, but when they built houses here, they scraped all the topsoil off and left the clay. We've been amending it ever since. So, now we have clay loam. My elevation is only 2,260 ft.; it's in a large valley.

It can get as hot as 116° or 118° F. here (although every other year it only gets to about 101° to 103° F.; during other years, the highest temperature is generally between 110 and 113), and it doesn't rain much during the growing season. Nights can sometimes be too cool for tomatoes even when it's hot in the day. I imagine it's more severe with colder nights in your area, though. I don't think it generally gets cooler than 50° F. at night when it's hot in the day, though, but it gets much cooler for the first and last parts of the season (the plants tend to grow very slowly in the spring).

During much of the growing season, temperatures are fairly consistently 90°+ F. for the daily high. I soon found that some varieties set fruit more easily in my garden than others, especially during the spring and the summer, although the ones that set fruit more easily in the spring aren't always the ones that do in the summer. Some kinds drop blossoms easily, and some don't, but I think seed-saving helps to reduce this.

I tried ~30 kinds of tomatoes in 2015, ~100 in 2016, and ~105 in 2017. I hope to try ~61 this year. Some of those were repeats, and most were crowded.

I learned some cool things, though.

I think our soil is colder than average, even when it's pretty hot. I think this slows growth. Warming it up (which I haven't tried) might help a fair bit (maybe put black plastic down or something).

Some kinds of tomatoes seem to do a whole lot better with wood ash, even though I get the impression that the soil is closer to alkaline than acidic. Maybe it's the forms of the minerals, the carbon, or the other minerals in the wood ash. I don't know. Maybe my soil isn't as alkaline as I imagined, but adding peat moss (which is very acidic) sure seems to help the plants.

Tomatoes seem to use a lot of calcium; so, I wouldn't be surprised if just growing them from year to year would help to acidify your soil, eventually.

Showering the plants and their foliage with a shower nozzel or an oscillating sprinkler helps them to grow faster/healthier in my garden. Our water might be polluted with fertilizer and pesticides from local farmers, though. So, that might be one reason it helps. I only like to shower them early in the season, though. They grow fine after they get a good start, and they taste better if I don't keep doing that.

One interesting thing is that tomatoes in our garden seem to grow faster initially if I don't thin them to one plant for a while. Plus, they're easier to shower earlier without hurting them that way, since they support each other better. It's also nice if there are pests that destroy new transplants, since they may not get them all.

I think going the wild tomato route is a smart thing, but there are probably a number of domestic tomatoes that will do reasonably, too, if you can find them. The main reason I've been growing so many kinds is to find the ones that do the best here. (And to save seeds from them all, and help to acclimate them to my growing conditions.)

If you try domestic tomatoes, you might try Sweet Orange Cherry, Sasha's Altai, and Sub Arctic Plenty. Pink Berkeley Tie Dye is great, but I think it needs drought and wood ash. Matina is a very vigorous grower, but I think it needs lots of water to produce particularly well (it's still vigorous either way, though). I've got a multi-flora cherry that did very well in clay-type soil here, and tasted awesome.

Avoiding late transplants seems helpful for me. I mean, if the plants are too young and it's too late in the season, that can really hold them back, due to the heat and drought.

I like to start my seeds in cell trays in an unheated 6'x5'x3' Strong Camel greenhouse, in March (I did it in April, last year). I think I need to start my peppers earlier, though, to get them more mature at the transplant. They don't grow as fast as tomatoes, especially when it's cooler. They'd probably sprout as easily now as in March in the greenhouse, though (it's a warm February, this year).

Most people are probably surprised that you can start seeds in a small, unheated greenhouse in Idaho in March, but it works, despite cold weather. They take longer to sprout than indoors, though (and I overseed, just in case), but they end up healthier and not-spindly at transplant time. Surprisingly, the quickest things to sprout in my greenhouse have been okra and magnetized watermelon seeds, even though the greenhouse isn't exactly hot inside. They can sprout in three or four days. I think peppers take the longest to sprout. Carolina Cross #183 watermelon takes a while, too (it's not one of the three/four-day varieties, even when magnetized).

I should winter sow some okra. It would probably do well with that method (winter sowing is a lot like using a small, unheated greenhouse). However okra germinates a lot better, so far, in my seed-starting mix (worm castings with a little peat moss) in the greenhouse in the spring than direct-seeded in our garden soil when it's warm. I've only had a few okra plants sprout (out of a number of entire packets of seeds) in our garden soil, direct-seeded (and it took a long time).

I've got to go for now.

The pages for the wild tomatoes has come along veery nicely! I'm fairly happy with it.

The pages which are 85-90% complete are:
Solanum cheesmaniae
Solanum galapagense
Solanum pimpinellifolium
Solanum habrochaites
Solanum peruvianum
Solanum pennellii
Solanum sitiens
Solanum lycopersicoides

The ones that have just a map and mating and flowering info are:
Solanum juglandifolium
Solanum ochranthum
Solanum arcanum
Solanum chmielewskii
Solanum neorickii
Solanum corneliomulleri
Solanum huaylasense

The descriptions for all should be looked over and either added upon or edited to be more concise or rewritten to flow better and check for accuracy. References to important tomato papers or info on each species should be added.

What i'm most excited about is that the pages look pretty good and the info i just added, namely Mating System information and Flowering times, should be VERY useful to those breeding with wild tomato species. At least for me, this information alone in an easy to read place will be very helpful to me. I would think for others as well. For the S. habrochaites page there were so many photos (and more that have been uploaded but not linked) that i went back to the pea database project pages and stole the table that we used over there. I think it has helped tremendously.

Awesome! :) I definitely appreciate you helping others to learn more about how to hybridize these.

Sure, no problem :)

What happened to your wiki?

Oh, I'm trying Stick, this year. The taste is okay (not a favorite, but I wouldn't call it a spitter or anything); it has a strange, subtle quality to it. The fruits are quite firm and have a lot of hang time. The plants are very small for me, this year (maybe 2' tall in adverse conditions—i.e. little water, hot soil due to the sun and black plastic, arid air moisture, ~100° F. every day for a long time with no rain; strong sun). They get a lot of flowers. They do grow more than one branch, contrary to what I had read. The fruits almost look striped. They're a very dark green for a tomato, before ripening (the darkest green I've seen). They set some fruit in the heat. The flowers stay open for a really long time if they don't set fruit right away (which is remarkable for a tomato). The fruits aren't terribly large. They're maybe a step above a cherry (or else a very large cherry). It wasn't terribly early for me, but not late either. The fruits are a uniform shape (kind of round to apple shaped or so). No splitting.

I want to cross it with Burpee Gloriana and see if we can get new varieties with the leaf type.

Our giant wasps liked them more than our other tomatoes. I don't know what they were doing on them, but they looked at the plants every day for some weeks, it seemed (sometimes several times a day). I'm not sure what species those wasps were, but they were gigantic.

My website is currently down. I'm trying to fix it, but its been harder than expected so far. I have a backup, so i hope it is not lost.

HELP!! I ran into spam bogging my mediawiki installation down and so i tried to delete it and restore an older backup, but i can't seem to get it working right like before. If anyone has website skills and/or knows how to restore a full tar file backup into working order with cPanel i would really appreciate the help!

Read more: http://alanbishop.proboards.com/thread/9246/andrews-plant-breeding-wiki?page=1#ixzz5PKBOidkv

Any progress on the website, yet? I use MediaWiki software, but I don't have server access where I use it (so, I haven't learned the stuff to help you there). I'll try to email you about an alternative!

Hi, yeah I got help getting my stuff saved. I just went back to a static website. Haven't restored the wild tomato stuff yet. But pea database is up. Biolumo.com

I'll see if I can get it back this week