L. esculentum var. validium

[Levent]

I've found very few data on this variety.I know only a short description of it.Compact plant with short internodes.Is it the scientific name for Heirloom Dwarfs or something else?What plant is this variety?Which criteria distinguish it from other varieties?Thanks in advance.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by Levent

I've found very few data on this variety.I know only a short description of it.Compact plant with short internodes.Is it the scientific name for Heirloom Dwarfs or something else?What plant is this variety?Which criteria distinguish it from other varieties?Thanks in advance.

http://kdcomm.net/~tomato/Tomato/tax.html

More aboyut validium and what it's related to, it's not a known variety as most of us know a variety, and in the Google search I did there were other links about it, but I thought I'd start here.

The scientific name for the true Dwarfs is Solanum lycopersicon or some still use esculentum as the species name.

Carolyn, and just noting that there are now 14 or 15 species of the true tomato that are in the genus Solanum.

[Fusion_power]

Validium is just a morphotype of the common tomato. It is caused by a recessive single gene mutation that results in stocky "dwarf" plants. It may be useful in breeding because the entire plant including leaves is modified with thicker and denser cell structures. Potato leaf plants are another recessive single gene variant sometimes referred to as "grandifolium". In my opinion, there is no valid reason to treat these variants separately from the rest of Solanum Lycopersicum.

Keith has a few words about it on his website. Unfortunately, Keith needs to update his taxonomic info, his is very outdated. You might search for "peralta tomato species" to find a more up-to-date treatment of the Lycopersicon section.

http://tgrc.ucdavis.edu/key.aspx

Including Solanum lycopersicum, there are currently 13 species recognized in section Lycopersicon. Three of these species - S. Cheesmaniae, S. Galapagense, and S. Pimpinellifolium - are fully cross compatible with domestic tomato, four more species - S. chmielewskii, S. habrochaites, S. neorickii, and S. pennelli - can be readily crossed with domestic tomato though with some limitations, and five species - S. arcanum, S. chilense, S. corneliomulleri, S. huaylasense, and S. peruvianum - can be crossed with domestic tomato with significant difficulty usually requiring embryo rescue to produce viable plants. The Lycopersicon section has not been fully sampled within the South American range in which wild species are found so new species may be added in the future.

Solanum section Lycopersicoides and section Juglandifolium are represented by two species each that are considered bridge species genetically intermediate between tomato and non-tuber bearing potato species. S. Lycopersicoides can be crossed with domestic tomato and introgression lines http://tgrc.ucdavis.edu/lycopersicoides_ils.aspx have been developed. This species was significant in moving the domestic tomato from separate genus status into the Solanum group because it directly links the tomato into the potato family.

I edited the wiki article on Tomato a few weeks ago to add the above info about wild species.

DarJones

[Levent]

Thanks all for the detailed input.DarJones, as I understand from your posting L. esculantum doesn't have any varieties.Grandifolium describes PL tomato sorts as a morphotype.Even the cherry sorts (ceraciforme) are morphotypes of L. esculantum, common tomato.From this point of view, validium's description (compact erect plant with short internodes) is the closest one that fits Dwarfs.

[carolyn137]

I will say that I'm not agreeing with some of the conclusions being made here but don't have time to offer more right now.

Best to understand, I think, that the genus name was changed from Lycopersicon back to Solanum many years ago, for those species that are tomatoes, and that there are other Solanums that aren't tomatoes.

The genus name change was approved by an international committee but not everyone everywhere has made the change.

As I said aove there are now 14-15 Solanums that are tomatoes, our normal garden varieties are S. or L.esculentum, some folks even say S or L lycopersicon,and that includes the true dwarf varieties. Of all of those species there are only, let me count, four of them, I think,that have edible fruits that are decent tasting,maybe just 3.

If you go to Johnny's Seeds and look at Matt's Wild you'll see cerasiforme at the end of the name and that's good to know since it means that the style with the stigma at the top is not exerted, sticks out, making crosss pollination more possible.

S. pimpinellifolium is the currant species and about half of them have exerted styles and half don't.

In the SSE Yearbooks there are long lists of so called wild ones, some named, some not and few I'd as to species. The bestplace tocheckout species accessions is The PGRC, alsoknownas the Rick Center, Google will do it for you,and so named since it was Dr. CharlesRick, who passed away a few years ago, who was the first to bring home accessions from the high mountain plateaus of Chil and Peru back to UC Davis in CA.

Darrel I mentioned the last part since you had said in another thread that tomatoes were tropical. They weren't, they grew on those temperate high plateaus, not in a tropical jungle with high heat and humidity. Google will bring up several links about that,or used to when I researched it a few years back, and I think there's an article at the PGRC as well.

Ok, have to do a few things before this big snow storm hits, which is about in 30 min.

Carolyn

MJorelater when I'mjuptoit.

[Levent]

Carolyn I agree with you about other species' taxonomy.They are not a matter of concern to me.However I still wonder whether L. esculentum (syn. S. lycopersicum) has varieties (I used it as a botanical term not from a gardeners' point of view) or not.Are all the tomatoes other than currants (L. pimpinellifolium sorts) just different morphotypes of one species?

[Fusion_power]

They weren't, they grew on those temperate high plateaus

Tropical does not always connote growing in a rain forest. It has to do with the day length and average daily temperatures a plant is adapted to. Tomatoes are tropical because they originated within 23 degrees of the equator and they live where average daily temps vary within the range of 10°C to 40°C. They are not day length sensitive, but are sun loving plants that do not produce well in shade. Tomato species are adapted from coastal areas right beside the sea to cloud forests to the High Desert areas of Chile. There is a lot of evidence our domestic tomatoes are directly derived from S. Pimpinellifolium but came through such a narrow genetic bottleneck that only a fraction of the genetic variation came through. Cerasiforme is an intermediate phase where DNA tests can often show signs of introgression from S. Pimpinellifolium. Matt's Wild Cherry is an excellent example since it has the ph2 gene which has not been found in domestic tomatoes but is readily found in S. Pimpinellifolium and in several Cerasiforme types.

S. habrochaites grows at high altitudes in the Andes and can withstand much colder temperatures than our domestic tomatoes. Crosses can be readily made with domestic tomatoes when the domestic tomato is used as the female parent but there is a very high level of linkage drag.

S. Juglandifolium is a shade loving rain forest plant. If our tomatoes were this shade tolerant, we could grow them under full tree cover. Crosses are currently not feasible to domestic tomato because of numerous chromosome inversions.

S. Pimpinellifolium is interesting because it was spread very widely in prehistory. Virtually all have exerted stigmas but with a lot of variation in style length. Some are exerted to 1/4 inch, others only 1/32 of an inch and a very very few are totally enclosed in the anther cone. The exerted stigma facilitates cross pollination. One subspecies of Pimpinellifolium is found in cloud forest environments. Others are found near sea level in Peru, Chile, Ecuador, and distributed throughout Central America up to Mexico.

DarJones

[maf]

Originally Posted by Levent

However I still wonder whether L. esculentum (syn. S. lycopersicum) has varieties (I used it as a botanical term not from a gardeners' point of view) or not.Are all the tomatoes other than currants (L. pimpinellifolium sorts) just different morphotypes of one species?

Genes have been introgressed from other species; the most obvious recent example are the anthocyanin tomatoes such as Indigo Rose. Technically I think such plants would be regarded as interspecific hybrids.

Whether this happened in the past or not I do not know for sure, but I agree that the var. validum sounds like expression of d the dwarf tomato gene. My experience of plants (not tomatoes) named as botanical "varieties" of a species circa 100 years ago is that if named now they would mostly be described as cultivars.

[Levent]

''Lycopersicon esculentum var. validum is the upright tomato''
What about this description? As far as I can see upright tomato designates Dwarfs.
http://web.extension.illinois.edu/dm...te/110828.html

[dice]

Here is a relevant discussion on "dwarf tree-type":
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/778581/