Flora of New Zealand Series

tomato

Glandular viscid, aromatic herb. Stems to c. 1 m long, often lax and semi-trailing. Lvs pinnate, to 30 cm long, but often much less. Leaflets 5-9, usually irregularly dentate, lobulate, sometimes with an additional small separate basal leaflet, sometimes entire except near base, ovate-oblong, densely hairy or villous beneath; base cuneate to truncate, often irregularly so; apex obtuse to acuminate. Calyx lobes 7-10 mm long, linear to narrow-lanceolate, reflexed at fruiting, glandular. Corolla lobes c. 1 cm long, lanceolate-ovate, hairy outside, acuminate. Anther cone c. 8 mm long. Fr. large, usually subglobose and grooved down one side, scarlet, hairy when young.

N.; S.: widespread but sporadic; K.: Raoul Id.

Andes possibly northwards to Mexico 1864

Usually only a casual escape from cultivation, cultivated land, waste and open places, rubbish heaps, occasionally forming small populations in scrub.

FL Jan-Dec.

Suspected of causing dermatitis (Connor 1977).

Wherever tomatoes are cultivated or eaten, spontaneous plants are likely to appear. Usually they do not persist for long in one place and thus are not properly naturalised. Wild plants presumably represent several cvs because in cultivation tomatoes are usually grown under a cv. name. No attempt can be made to determine which cvs have been collected wild because details of frs are almost always lacking. Yellow-fruited cvs are grown, but as far as is known these are not wild. Tomato has been recorded previously in N.Z. as L. lycopersicum.