Leaf shape and heat tolerance

[dice]

I wonder what the evolutionary benefit of variegated foliage
is?

Camouflage (from some sort of leaf predator)?

Alternatively, its only evolutionary advantage may be that humans find
it curious, grow it out, and save the seeds.

[cornbreadlouie]

I'm going to try do some crosses this year with variegated and Lucinda, which has silvery fir tree foliage. Another cross with banana legs and bosque blue. Then cross the two of them with the goal of a striped blue tomato with the wispy, finely serrated variegated foliage. If successful I will send seeds to people in hot locales for the opportunity of seeing how heat tolerant it is.

[travis]

Desert plants also can have waxy coatings on the leaves and very fat leaves when looked at in the cross section, and the interior tissue is spongy or succulent, holding more moisture.

[J Peazy]

Originally Posted by dice

Camouflage (from some sort of leaf predator)?

Alternatively, its only evolutionary advantage may be that humans find
it curious, grow it out, and save the seeds.

I have heard that if you really want to reduce your summer cooling bills you should paint your roof white. The white roof reflects the suns rays and reduces heat as a result.

Would plants operate on a different principle?

[Tom Wagner]

Leaf size and shape?


Indigo Blue has chilense in the pedigree...wonder if more of that type could be introgressed....Here is the chilense .



IMG]http://i.imgur.com/qUof2.jpg[/IMG]
Species: Solanum chilense
Quick description
A beautiful wild species of tomato found in a variety of arid conditions in western South America.
Appearance
Fruit are small (around 1.5cms across) and round with sparse hairs on the surface. When ripe the fruit is a greenish white with purple stripes. The plant itself grows to around 1m tall and 1m across though it tends to be less erect and more spread out in rocky areas. Leaves and stem are covered with a dense ‘hair’. The leaves are grayish green on the upper surface and paler beneath, they have rounded serrations at their edge.
Taste / cooking
Unknown
Specific nutritional benefits
Unknown
Habitat / growing
Grows on the western slopes of the Andes from southern Peru to northern Chile. Found in hyper-arid rocky plains and coastal deserts at a variety of altitudes from sea level to 3000 m.
Stress tolerance
Drought tolerance
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/5hZrM.jpg[/IMG]

[Fusion_power]

I grew chilense last year. I recommend not eating them, they are tart/bitter and taste pretty bad. The foliage is pretty unusual and there are some really good disease tolerance genes floating around in the species. I am interested because an exceptionally good gene for tolerance to septoria is present in one of the Chilense lines. Note that Chilense is in the Peruvianum group and is VERY difficult to cross with domestic tomatoes. It usually requires embryo rescue.

Keith has some good info here.

http://www.kdcomm.net/~tomato/Tomato/pcomplx.html

[J Peazy]

Something about this guy actually looks very familiar to me. I translated the website with an online translator and these are apparently regarded much like beneficial weeds in Mexico.

Translated from: http://www.fitochapingo.com/2010/02/...-tomatito.html

The wild tomato, or tomatillo tomatito (Lycopersicon esculentum var. Cerasiforme) is a species of Solanum family very common in tropical regions of Mexico. It is a cultivated species as such, rather it is tolerated by farmers because it has very specific characteristics for the preparation of sauces as its flavor.

This image is a plant with fruit Coyutla Township, Veracruz, taken within a maize crop is common to see in their fields, coffee plantations and other crops such as chile and onion. Local people hold them in their fields cultivated, harvested for consumption and even sell because of good acceptance in the regional market. Totonac area of northern Veracruz and the Sierra Norte de Puebla is known as Pakgxa:

An accidental cross in a Mexican tomato field would explain why my "oddball" growout didn't look anything like the other "F2 Romas" from the grocery store. It was probably an F1 after all.

...not that it is relevant at all to anything being discussed here.

...just proud of my detective work.

[dice]

I have heard that if you really want to reduce your summer cooling bills you should paint your roof white. The white roof reflects the suns rays and reduces heat as a result.

Would plants operate on a different principle?

They might. Cooling by reflection may not be very efficient in an
organism whose metabolism depends on light as an energy source.
It could be more adaptive to close up leaves in too much light, for
example, or sweat some kind of protective coating (which could double
as a pest repellent), or whatever.

I suspect that variegated foliage may exist not because it helps the plant,
but simply because the mutation that produced it was not immediately
fatal to the seedling.

[Doug9345]

Alternatively, its only evolutionary advantage may be that humans find
it curious, grow it out, and save the seeds.

I suspect that variegated foliage may exist not because it helps the plant,
but simply because the mutation that produced it was not immediately
fatal to the seedling.

One of the ways to be a successful organism is to have a trait desirable to humans. Think about dogs, cattle verses buffalo.

[travis]

Buffalo can't fetch ducks downed in ice cold water, catch mice and moles, and are rather rough on one's lap.

[J Peazy]

Originally Posted by travis

Buffalo can't fetch ducks downed in ice cold water, catch mice and moles, and are rather rough on one's lap.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BY5FXn-IBDc&sns=em

They will ride to town in the car with you though.

[J Peazy]

Would parthenocarpy be a desirable trait in heat set tomatoes or no? You see it in the ones geared for cool weather.