Flora of the Hawaiian Islands
Dicotyledon Literature for Solanum lycopersicum
Peralta et al., 2021.
   Solanaceae -- The Nightshade Family Bibliography
      Solanum lycopersicum

Common name(s): nightshade, tomato, `ohi`a, `ohi`a haole, `ohi`a lomi, `ohi`a ma ka nahele, currant tomato, kamako
General Information
DistributionNative to the northern Andes of South America, widely cultivated and naturalized in warm temperate and tropical areas.In the Hawaiian Islands, naturalized on Ni`ihau, Kaua`i, O`ahu, Moloka`i, Lana`i, Maui, Kaho`olawe, Hawai`i.
















Habit
 Sprawling annual or biennial or sometimes short-lived perennial herbs; stems slender, usually 1-2 m long, densely minutely puberulent and villous with simple and glandular hairs, clammy, aromatic.
Leaves
 Leaves odd-pinnate compound, alternate, ovate to narrowly ovate in outline, 5-20(-30) cm long, 5-10(-20) cm wide, primary leaflets 3-4(-5) pairs, 3-7 cm long, 1-4 cm wide, ovate or elliptic, terminal leaflet the largest, puberulent with glandular hairs, margins entire, deeply dentate or lobed, apex acute to acuminate.
Flowers
 Flowers few to ca. 15 in lateral, racemose cymes, sometimes forked, pedicels articulate in the upper 1/3; calyx deeply divided, the lobes narrowly lanceolate, ca. 1 cm long; corolla yellow, stellate, 1-2 cm in diameter, divided ca. 1/2 its length, 5-lobed or 6-9-lobed in cultivars, the lobes narrowly triangular, lobes 8-10 mm, often reflexed; stamens 5; filaments sparsely pubescent on margins; anthers yellow, lanceolate, 8-10 mm long including sterile apex 2-3 mm long, introrsely dehiscent by slits, coherent in a conical structure and united by minute marginal hairs; ovary 2-celled, with an expanded placenta (multi celled in cultivars), ovules numerous; style erect; stigma terminal, not exceeding anthers.
Fruit
 Berries red, rarely pink or yellow, succulent, globose or depressed globose, 1.5-2 cm in diameter in feral forms, up to 10 cm in diameter in cultivars, smooth or furrowed, pedicel articulation obvious.
Seeds
 Seeds numerous, dull buff gray, compressed, 2-3 mm long, pubescent with hair-like outgrowths of the lateral testa cell walls, these adpressed and giving a silky appearance to the surface or more often shaggy.
Chromosomes
 2n = 12, 24, 36, 48, 78, 84.
Notes
 Most previous work on tomatoes have suggested that the cultivated tomato was derived from small-fruited forms called by many authors “var. cerasiforme”. Research into the genetic control of fruit shape and size in tomatoes has shown that the small-fruited forms are not ancestral, but instead a mixture of wild and cultivated forms (Peralta et al. 2021)
Contributor
 Nancy Khan