Evolution of the Tomato.

King Country Chronicle, Volume III, Issue 107, 12 November 1908, Page 4

Evolution of the Tomato.

The large, smooth, solid-fleshed tomato of to-day is a striking example of what can be accomplished by patient plant-breeding. Not much more than a generation ago (says the "Michagan Farmer"), and well within the memory of most people with grey hair, the tomato was a practically useless fruit and by the old people of that day ; was considered poisonous. "It's flying, in the face of Providence,'' many of them would say, "to try and circumventnatture, and grow those things for eating. Some day the whole race of people will be poisoned; and it >vill sgrve them right." Nevertheless, there were some who saw, 'or thought they saw," the possibilites of the tomato, 'arid the Trophy tomato, introduced by the late Colonel Waring* who laid down his'life in giving Cuba sanitation, was the first of the modern, smooth, round, in fact, edible tomatoes. This tomato, as stated by Colonel. Waring, "is the product of crossing and careful cultivation by Dr Hand, of Baltimore Co., Md. He began his work in connection with it in about 1850. He crossed the small, smooth, love apple, which was filled with juice and seeds, with the compound, convoluted tomato of that period. This latter was practically four or five separate fruits packed into one, with the skin running far into the convolution. He succeeded in putting the solid mass of this compound growth into the smooth skin of the love-apple, and then, by careful selection year after year, increased its size, and the solidity of its contents, until it became a mas; of flesh interspersed with seed cells. '