POTATOES AND TOMATOES ON THE SAME PLANT.

Otago Witness, Issue 2929, 4 May 1910, Page 20

POTATOES AND TOMATOES ON THE SAME PLANT.

In the article, on "Irish Blight- in Tomatoes" which appeared in the January number (says Mr D. M'Alpine, vegetable pathologist, in the Victorian Journal of Agriculture) it was stated, as showing tha close relationship existing between potatoes and tomatoes, that a tomato plant could be grafted on to a potato plant, with tha result that both tubers and fruits would be produced. This is a well-known fact, although I have not carried out the experiment myself, but a clear photograph of such a plant has recently appeared in the Deutsche Landwirthschaftliche Presse. Potatoes were planted in pots on June 2, and on June 19 one of the young potato haulms which had developed three shoots was cut across, and each of the shoots had a young tomato plant grafted on to it. The grafting was done in the usual manner by cleft grafting. On July 4 the plants were removed from the pots and planted' out in the garden, where they remained ■until they ripened. One of the plants at the end of October bore 18 tomatos. and 11 potatoes. The foliage was almost exclusively that of the tomato, and these leaves supplied the nourishment not only for the tomato, but also foi the potato. Thus, from the same nutritive material two quite different parts of different plants were nourished —the succulent fleshy fruit of the tomato and the firm starchy tubers of the potato. There was no blending of the properties of the two. Just as in the case of a peach shoot grafted on the rooted stem of a plum, the shoot continues to develop only leaves, flowers, and ' fruits of the peach as long as it lives; iand! 'if a shoot of the plum stock were allowed to grow, even after 20 years' union with the peach., it would be found to produce only the normal leaves, flowers, and fruits of a plum.