Cool Research – The Garden Professors™

Testing, testing, 1-2-3: Trialing new plants for the home garden

How do you know that plants will do well in your garden? Do you research the types of plants for your region, study different cultivars, and select only things that have been proven to do well for your conditions? Or do you buy what catches your eye at the garden center, plant it, and then see what happens? I used to joke that my home garden was a horticulture experiment station, since I’d try all kinds of random plants or techniques and see what works for me. Now, I get to do that as a fun part of my job through the All-America Selections (AAS) program. You’ve likely seen the AAS symbol on plants or seed packets at the garden center or in catalogs. Heck, you may even have them in your garden (and not know it). I compare it to the “Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval” that you used to see on appliances, cleaners, etc. The AAS program is a non-profit started in the 1930’s with the goal of evaluating new plants so that home gardeners can purchase high quality seeds and plants and to assist the horticulture industry in marketing innovations from their breeding programs. You can read more about AAS and its history here.

A few weeks ago I traveled to Chicago for the All-America Selections (AAS) Annual Summit to receive their Judge Ambassador Award. I had signed up a few years ago to be a trial site for edible crops for AAS. The following year I talked my colleague Scott into signing up as a judge for their ornamental trials. The fun thing about the program is that we get to grow all kinds of vegetables, fruits, and flowers that aren’t even on the market yet. We get to see how well they grow compared to similar plants and rate them on a number of factors including growth habit, disease resistance, and performance plus flavor (for edible crops) or flower color/form (for ornamentals). It can be hard work, but it is rewarding to help identify true plant innovations and to see your favorites be announced as winners.

How the testing works
While the AAS Trials may not have the rigor of academic crop research, I do appreciate the procedures in place that provide objective and high standard results.

Breeders, developers, and horticultural companies submit their new plants that are planned for future introduction to the board of AAS for consideration in the trialing program. During the application process, novel traits of the plants are identified to ensure that the plant offers something new and exciting – these are the traits that judges will observe and score. The board reviews the application to determine if it fits within the program rules.

One great thing about the program is that trial judges are professional horticulturalists from universities, seed companies, botanical gardens, etc. – they’re people who know how to grow things and know what quality plants look and act like. There are trial sites all around the country, providing for replication and generalizeable results for most regions of the country. The conditions plants are grown in also vary by location. My trial is at a farm where management is minimal. When we were at the summit we visited the trial gardens at Ball Horticulture which looked much more maintained and pampered compared to mine. This gives data on a variety of maintenance levels as you’ll find in home gardens – some gardeners are very conscientious about maintaining their plants and others have a more laissez faire approach. In order to win as a full national AAS winner, the plants have to perform well across the country in all these different situations. Sometimes those that perform well in a few regions but not the others will be designated as regional winners.

Second, the tests are blind. This means that we do not know what the exact plant is, who the breeder or seed company is, or any other info other than what type of plant it is. To the judge, each entry is just a number. It could be from a seed company you love (or hate), your best friend, the breeder who was your advisor from grad school, etc. This makes the results fair and reduces the chance for bias toward or against a plant based on its origins. The ratings are just based on the plant.

Another part of the trial is comparison. It is one thing to grow a tomato plant and say “yep, that’s a good tomato.” Its another to grow a tomato and compare it to similar cultivars to say “yep, that’s a good tomato….but it is better than what’s already available on the market.” The goal of the program is to show how new plants have merit over older plants. We only need so many new tomatoes (and let’s face it, there are lots of new tomatoes – we test WAY too many in the AAS process for my liking). The board of AAS judges reads the entry info from the new cultivar being tested and selects plants (usually two) to compare it against. If the trial is a yellow cherry tomato, it will be grown and tested alongside other yellow cherry tomatoes. The scoring is based on whether its performance or taste is as good as or better than the comparisons. If most judges don’t rank it as “better” then it has no chance of winning.

Confidentiality and Proprietary Plants

The fact that the testing is blind, paired with the fact that results of “failed” tests are not released, lends itself to confidentiality. Another important factor about the testing is the proprietary nature of the tests and test sites. These are new plants that haven’t been introduced to the market (except for the case of perennial trials) and are usually for proprietary or patented plants. Test sites should have some sort of control over who enters them and signs prohibiting the collection of seeds, pollen, or cuttings are placed at the site. Believe it or not, the world of plant introductions can be dog-eat-dog and cutthroat.

So what if it doesn’t win?

One of the cool things about the test is seeing the announcements of the winners early the following year. You see the list of plants and think back to what you grew the previous season. If often find myself thinking “oh yeah, I remember that plant, it did really well” and sometimes even “how did that win, it did horrible for me.” This is a good reminder that we can’t base generalized garden recommendations on anecdotal evidence. What did well for me may not work for someone else and vice versa. All the results from the test sites go together to provide a general view of the plant performance. It will do well for some and not others.

So if most of the judges rank the crop as not performing, looking, or tasting as good as the comparisons the plant doesn’t win. And that’s it. Due to the confidential nature of the testing you won’t know that it failed the test. Even I won’t know that it failed the test. It will likely go on to market without the AAS seal where it will face an even tougher test – the test of consumer demand. Of course, many people may grow it and be successful, and some may grow it without success.

What are the AAS Winners and how do I find them?

There’s a list of plants announced each year through the AAS website and social media channels. You can find a list, in reverse order of winning (meaning most recent first) on the AAS Website. The site also has a searchable database if you’re looking for a specific plant. Since these plants are owned by lots of different seed companies and breeders, there’s also a retailer listing on the site. The AAS program also supports a number of Display Gardens across the country, including botanical gardens, university gardens, and others where the public can see the most recent winners growing. Here in Omaha we maintain a display garden for the ornamental plants at our county fairgrounds. We also have our on-campus garden which is used for our TV show Backyard Farmer (the longest running educational TV program in the country, BTW) which serves as a display garden for both ornamental and edible crops.

I recently shared the AAS Testing Program with the local news here in Omaha. Check it out:

Some of my favorite recent AAS Winners
Asian Delight Pak Choi – this was planted in May and didn’t bolt. We were still harvesting it in October.

Pepper Just Sweet – these plants were big and healthy even when everything else was struggling. The peppers were delicious.

Potato Clancy – potatoes….from seed! Just fun!

Pepper Habanero Roulette – All of the fruity sweet, none of the heat. A fun heatless habanero.

Dianthus Intraspecific Supra Pink– A reblooming, prolific Dianthus with interesting ruffled flowers.

Eggplant Patio Baby – container sized eggplant with mini fruits perfect for cooking or roasting whole.

Ornamental Pepper Black Pearl – Cute purple flowers lead to these shiny pepper pearls. Love the black leaves, too.

Native vs. nonnative – can’t we all just get along?

Probably the most contentious gardening topic I deal with online is the native vs. nonnative plant debate. This, unfortunately, is a debate that is more based in emotion than science, and I don’t intend to stir that pot again. We’ve discussed it on this blog before (you can find a list of them here), and I’ve published both a literature review and a fact sheet on the science relevant to tree and shrub selection. What I want to do in this post is compare two research papers, both in peer-reviewed journals, that come up with dramatically different conclusions.

The first has been getting a lot of publicity on the web and in social media. It was published just two days ago, but because of widespread PR prior to release it appears over 37,000 times in a Google search. The title – “Nonnative plants reduce population growth of an insectivorous bird” – and much of the prerelease publicity about the article spells doom and gloom. It’s a message that gets traction.

The second was published a year earlier and is entitled “Native birds exploit leaf-mining moth larvae using a new North American host, non-native Lonicera maackii.” It appears 194 times in a Google search, even though it’s been available for over a year.

The reason I’m singling out these two articles is they have completely different messages – and one of them is not being heard as loudly as the other. The first focuses on a single bird species, the Carolina chickadee (Poecile carolinensis) and its diet in urban landscapes. Their conclusion: “…properties landscaped with nonnative plants function as populations sinks for insectivorous birds.” Thus, any gardener who happens to use introduced ornamental plants in their landscape is made to feel guilty for starving their insect-eating birds. (As an aside with my manuscript reviewer hat on – this statement has no business being in an abstract as it overextrapolates the research on one species to include ALL insectivorous birds.)

Carolina chickadee (Poecile carolinensis)

Black-capped chickadee (Poecile atricapillus)

The second article has a different focus. It reports the feeding of black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus) on the larvae of a leaf-mining moth (Phyllonorycter emberizaepenella). While leaf miners are common food items for chickadees, the point of this article was to document the host of the leaf-miner – a nonnative and particularly invasive species of honeysuckle (Lonicera maackii).

Honeysuckle leaf miner (Phyllonorycter emberizaepenella)

Chickadees as a group are particularly adept at finding and consuming leaf miners, whose tunnels normally protect them from insectivorous birds. Chickadees move along branches,“examining leaves both above and below them; the chickadees sometimes scanned by hanging upside-down.” This makes it easier to find and extract leaf-miners, as the underside of the leaf is easier to tear open than the surface. And in fact this behavior is reflected among other species of chickadee and leaf-miner: “Similarly, in 15 years of study, Connor et al. (1999) never observed species other than Carolina chickadees (Poecile carolinensis) feeding on the larvae of the gracillarid Cameraria hamadryadella [oak leaf miner].” While these are not the same species of leaf miner studied in this paper, the point is that chickadees eat leaf-mining insects. And leaf-miners can obviously adapt to new food sources, including introduced plants. This is basic ecological science.

Oak leaf miner (Cameraria hamadryadella)

Neither Craves’s article (the second of these two articles) nor that by Connor et al. (cited within Craves’s article) are cited by Narango et al. (2018 – the first article), even though both are certainly pertinent to the topic. But they don’t fit the narrative – which is that introduced plants are not good food sources for the insects that chickadees eat. So they are left out of the discussion, which by default is now biased – not objective. Not science-based.

And I don’t have a good answer to the obvious question – which is why we continue to demonize noninvasive, introduced plants in the absence of a robust body of evidence supporting that view.

Hello Again, and a fun article that was called to my attention.

By Jeff Gillman (posted by Linda C-S, who has taken liberties with using photos from UNC Charlotte gardens that have nothing to do with Jeff’s post.)

It has been almost two years since I have had the chance to post anything as a Garden Professor. Since then I’ve taken a job as the Director of UNC Charlotte Botanical Gardens and there are all kinds of things I’d like to share with you, and perhaps sometime over the next few weeks and months I will, but for now what is probably most pertinent is that I absolutely love my job. I am still doing some work on garden myths, but what I’m finding more entertaining is investigating the histories of different plants and their interactions with humans. In fact, in about a month or so, my friend Cindy Proctor and I will be releasing a podcast titled The Plants We Eat that investigates the interesting history, culture and biology of the various plants we use for food. We’ve already recorded shows on strawberries, grapes and mad honey, and we’ll be doing shows on apples, figs, and a few others before we release it – we want to have a decent backlog of shows so that we can maintain a pace of one podcast a week.

But enough about me! The current Gardens Professors called my attention to a recent article titled “The effect of ad hominem attacks on the evaluation of claims promoted by scientists”, and I found it informative to say the least. This article provides instructions on how to stop people from trusting a particular study.

No, seriously. If you wanted to you could actually rewrite this as a short manual on how to make people question the results of any scientific study.

And if you did I think it would look kind of like this:

(Short Disclaimer – I’m pretty sure that the authors of the above article never intended it to be taken in the way I’m presenting it. I’m posting this purely as satire.)

So, someone has published a scientific article that you disagree with. Hey, we’ve all been there. Scientific evidence that contradicts your beliefs/works/preconceived notions sucks, but it isn’t the end of the world. There are things you can do.

You might consider conducting your own well-designed experiments that would call into question some of the claims of the offending work. Once upon a time this was been the standard way to address this kind of problem, but this could take months or even years to accomplish. And the truth of the matter is that your experiment might not even say what you want it to and even if it does, with attention spans the way they are, nobody will even remember what you’re even talking about when your paper comes out.

Which is to say, there are better, faster ways to take care of inconvenient research, and that’s where this convenient manual comes into play.

First, realize that attacking the research itself isn’t a sure thing. Sure, it’s the right thing to do, but morals be damned, attacking the research itself can be waaaayyy too technical. People won’t understand what you’re talking about, so forget about it.

Attacking researchers personally by making nasty comments about where they graduated from college or that they do sloppy research would seem like winner, that kind of attack just doesn’t cut it today. Maybe it’s the political climate, but, to their credit, people just aren’t responding to non-specific personal attacks the way they once did.

So you’ve got to be smart and hit them where it hurts. You could say that data was fabricated in the paper that you want to discredit, but this could be problematic if it isn’t true. Not to worry. All you really need to do is find an instance where the researcher did do something wrong. In fact, it’s possible that some past misconduct could be even more effective at discrediting a paper than misconduct on the paper in question itself.

The gold standard, however, is conflict of interest. By establishing that the researcher who has caused you grief has some sort of conflict of interest you can cause people to question the results of research just about as effectively as if some sort of misconduct had taken place, and conflicts of interest are much easier to find! You could blame a company, a person, or even a University. Shoot, want to show that a study, which demonstrates that an herbicide is effective at controlling a weed, isn’t true? All you need to do is show that the company which makes the herbicide gave a few hundred dollars to an athletic program at the school, or show that one of the student workers in the lab has a second cousin employed by the company. It’s all good.

And so there you have it. The fast, easy way to discredit someone. And remember, just implying things can be as effective as having facts. No need to lie! Good Luck, and remember The Truth is What You Make It!

BOTANIST IN THE KITCHEN

(Revisiting Ray’s Recommendations)

It’s been awhile since I wrote about, or recommended a blog I like which I often use as a source of something to share to The Garden Professors Facebook Page, so I thought I’d revisit the topic this month.

Botanist in the Kitchen was launched in the fall of 2012 by Dr. Jeanne Osnas and Dr. Katherine Angela Preston, evolutionary biologists who also love to cook and were often asked by friends and family to discuss the details about plants during dinner parties.

Add a friend, chef Michelle Fuerst, to provide recipes and there you have it.

Our goal is three-fold: to share the fascinating biology of our food plants, to teach biology using edible, familiar examples, and to suggest delicious ways to bring the plants and their stories to your table. To judge by the questions we are often asked at dinner parties (“What is an artichoke?” “Why is okra slimy?”), some curious eaters genuinely want to know which plant part they are eating and how its identity affects the characteristics of the food.

Dr. Nigel Chaffey, an editor of the Annals of Botany journal and their blog, Botany One coined a cool word (which I’ve stolen) for their mix of plant science and cookery … Phyto-Food-Phylogeny while introducing them to a wider audience …

Plants and food? Tell me more! Well, espousing the view that ‘a person can learn a lot about plants through the everyday acts of slicing and eating them’, The Botanist in the Kitchen ‘is devoted to exploring food plants in all their beautiful detail as plants – as living organisms with their own evolutionary history and ecological interactions’.

I first learned about the blog back in 2015 from an article in Business Insider, linking to their post on the various foods we grow, that were bred from one species of plant …

Six vegetables you can find in any grocery store and which most people eat on a regular basis are actually all from this one plant. Over the last few thousand years, farmers have bred Brassica Oleracea into six “cultivars” that eventually became many of the vegetables we eat …

From the blog post …

Some species have undergone the domestication process multiple times, and with some of these species, each domestication effort has focused on amplifying different structures of the plant, producing a cornucopia of extraordinarily different vegetables or fruits from the same wild progenitor. Such is the case with Brassica oleracea. The wild plant is a weedy little herb that prefers to grow on limestone outcroppings all around the coastal Mediterranean region.

So if you enjoy learning about plants we eat, and trying various recipes with them, be sure to follow the Botanist in the Kitchen via email.

Previous posts here on the other blogs I’ve recommended:

Scientific Beekeeping

Frankenfood Facts

James Kennedy on Chemistry

Ask an Entomologist

Nature’s Poisons

What’s in YOUR honey? It may not be the nectar you expected.

This month’s National Geographic has a brief article from an ongoing study of the DNA profiles of urban honey. While we can all observe honeybees visiting flowers in our own gardens, until recently we could only assume what nectar they were collecting for honey production. This tantalizing snippet completely blew me away.

The study, undertaken by an entomologist who founded the Urban Beekeeping Laboratory and Bee Sanctuary, is sampling urban hives from major cities, including Boston, Portland (OR), New York, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington DC. For each of these cities, National Geographic reports the top three plants for honeybees based on relative DNA levels.

Here’s what I found amazing about this research:

- - The top sugar sources are from TREES. Not wildflowers. We don’t see bees visiting trees as easily as we see them visiting flowers, so our perceptions are biased. Over 75% of the sugar used for urban honey is from trees.
    Honeybee visiting flowering tree
  - The trees that are most popular for bee visitation are not necessarily native to those regions. Seattle bees, for instance, prefer linden and cypress trees, neither of which are part of the native coniferous forest. Likewise, the despised eucalyptus trees of San Francisco are one of the top three sugar sources.
    Flowers and leaves of linden
- You’ll notice that I didn’t use the word “nectar” in describing what bees are collecting. That’s because much of the sugar they are gleaning isn’t coming from flowers. It’s coming from sap-sucking insects like aphids that produce honeydew. Bees apparently collect honeydew as well as floral nectar.
  Aphids!
- Urban areas usually have higher plant diversity than rural areas, given the variety of woody and herbaceous plants that people use in their gardens and landscapes. The researchers speculate that this higher plant diversity may be one reason that urban hives are healthier and more productive than rural ones.
  Garden beehive

Many gardeners operate under the assumption that native plants are the best choice for gardens and landscapes. Though certain landscapes (like those undergoing ecological restoration) should only be planted with natives, there is no evidence-based reason that we shouldn’t be using non-invasive, introduced species as part of our planting palette. In fact, research has demonstrated that tree species nativity plays only a minor role in urban landscape biodiversity: most animals learn to use new resources in their environment. Honeybees, considered to be “super-generalists” insects, are demonstrating that in spades.

Allium Fever

Ornamental onions are hot patooties. From big, bold, purple globes to small pink half-moons, there is no end to ornamental onion-y goodness out there with 30+ species and cultivars in the trade. There’s no substitute for ornamental onions in regards to architectural drama – the perfect geometric foil to wispy grasses, floral spikes, and umpteen daisy-thingies. The seed heads from the sturdier species will persist and add interest to autumn and winter perennialscapes (not sure if that’s a word).

Art-of-Gardening-COVER-3D-1 — Not one but TWO cultivars of Allium on the cover of the fabulous new Chanticleer book…

All are members of the Allium genus, just like those onions sprouting in your kitchen counter veg basket – hence the deer- and small mammal- resistance factor. However…there are some issues.

Can be short-lived. I have first-hand experience with this – plant, enjoy for a year or two, then…where did they go?
Bloom time is rather vaguely defined. Most catalogs list “early summer” or “late spring” for most cultivars. But if you want continuous purple orbs, what’s the order of bloom?
Can be expensive. Bulbs for some of the mammoth “softball” sizes will set you back $5-$7 each (the bulbs themselves are huge). This is of particular concern due to the first item.
Foliage failure. For some of the largest species and cultivars, the foliage starts to die back around (or even before) bloom time. Not a lot of time to put the necessary energy back into that big honkin’ bulb.

We already have a multi-year lily perennialization trial going in conjunction with Cornell and some other institutions. I thought I might try the same thing with Allium.

Student worker Lauren, after a long day of taking data on a gazillion lilies.

Unfortunately, I had this bright idea in November – well into the bulb-ordering season. I tried to compile as complete an inventory as I could, ordering from several vendors. Ended up with 28 species and cultivars – as much as the space prepared (check out that nice soil!) could hold, at our urban horticulture center near campus (Virginia Tech is in Blacksburg, USDA Zone 6, about 2000′). We put five or seven bulbs (depending on size) in each plot, and replicated the whole thing three times.

We’ll take data over the next three years on time of emergence, bloom time and duration, foliage duration (have a nifty chlorophyll meter that can help quantify that), some growth measurements, and perennial tendencies (or not). My hope is to end up with a really specific chronology of bloom times plus life expectancy. Yes, this was just a patented Holly wild hair; luckily I had some general funds to cover it. But I do think our little onion project will be of interest to more than a few folks, whether professional landscape designers or home gardeners. I know I’m excited to see the results ($30 for five bulbs – yeek)!

Upside-down growing

I was poking through old photos and came across this oddity:

What you are looking at is Japanese maples (Acer palmatum) being grown hanging upside down. I saw this year ago at a nursery in Japan. (You are also probably looking at a disaster of girdling roots in those tiny plastic pots, but that’s another topic) When I asked about them, I was told that they are weeping forms, and grown this way temporarily before being planted in the ground right-side up.
Looking at the image, it makes me think that the particular variety grown here might have a mutation that makes them negatively gravitropic, and so respond to the pull of gravity in the opposite way a normal plant would. (For more on that see my earlier post on gravitropism in corn) Growing them upside down would allow them to produce a fairly normal branching pattern, and then once plants, new growth would, presumably, cascade down from the established trunk and stem.
Anyway. That’s your oddity for the day.
Joseph Tychonievich

Love notes of genetics and physiology for Valentine’s Day

A St. Valentine meme compliments of my "friend" the self-styled Rev. Apostle, and Bishop to the Stars, Joel L. Watts. — A St. Valentine meme compliments of my “friend” the self-styled Rev. Apostle, and Bishop to the Stars, Joel L. Watts.

Ahhh….’Tis the time of year when we celebrate romantic love in homage to a 3rd Century priest who came up a head short for performing unsanctioned Christian weddings. (It is also of note that St. Valentine, or Valentinius as his friends called him, is the patron saint of bee keepers but, strangely, not of birds, flowers, or trees).

In celebration, many suitors, partners, spouses, fling-seekers, and woo-wishers will flock to florists, grocery floral counters, and even gas stations to purchase flowers, namely roses, that have likewise been beheaded.

Those roses, with all of their tightly wound petals, look nothing wild-type roses. Modern roses are the product of many centuries of breeding that started independently in China and the Mediterranean region.

So if the wild-type rose has a single row of five petals, how do breeders get all of those extra petals? They can just come from nowhere, you know.

The simple answer is that tissue that turns into stamens in the wild-type flower are converted to petal tissue. While early (and even contemporary) plant breeders may not understand the mechanism responsible for the doubling (gene expression), research is showing that the same gene is responsible for the doubling in both the Chinese and Mediterranean set of species/subspecies.

In a nutshell, what happens is that the different regions of the flower – sepals, petals, stamens, carpel – develop in response to the expression of a set of genes. It isn’t just the genes acting alone, though; it is their interaction in the tissues that makes the difference. These genes are grouped by the floral part they affect and are grouped as A-Function, B-Function, C-Function, and E-Function.

If you want to learn a whole lot more about it than I can ‘splain (it has been a few years since my last plant physiology class), this paper thoroughly explains the gene expression and evolution of the flower. Their figure depicting the flower model is informative, yet simple. I’ve included it (and its accompanying caption) below.

The ABCE model of floral organ identity. Sepals are produced where A function acts alone, petals where A and B functions overlap, stamens where B and C functions combine, and carpels where C function acts alone. In the eudicot genetic model Arabidopsis thaliana, APETALA1 (AP1) and APETALA2 (AP2) are the A-function genes, APETALA3 (AP3) and PISTILLATA (PI) together specify B function, C function is specified by AGAMOUS (AG), and multiple SEPALLATA genes provide E function. http://www.pnas.org/content/107/52/22570

In the paper “Tinkering with the C-Function: A Molecular Frame for the Selection of Double Flowers in Cultivated Roses” researchers show that in lines from both regions of the world produced double flowers as a result in a reduction of expression of the C-Function gene AGAMOUS (RhAG) leads to double flowers. In Arabidopsis (every plant lab bench jockey’s favorite model plant), this reduction shifts expression of the A-Function genes toward the center of the plant, turning stamens into petals and carpels into sepals.

Now, one question I get from time to time is “why don’t these roses smell like the old-fashioned roses?” One answer is that as we breed for looks, we are breeding out genes responsible for scent oil production. So Shakespeare was actually wrong when he said that “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” That isn’t true these days.

So, I wish you a perfectly lovely Valentine’s Day, no matter how you celebrate. Just remember to whisper sweet nothings of floral gene expressions in your sweetheart’s ear. And remember to stop and smell the roses – if it is a variety that has a decent scent.

Add one species, get four new ones

Here’s an interesting twist on the whole native, non-native discussion… sometimes the introduction of new species of plants can trigger the evolution of new species of insects! Sometimes, in fact, a whole bunch of them, as is described in the coolest new research paper I’ve read in ages (Actual paper, behind a pay wall) (A brief Summary)

Introduce apples, trigger the evolution of four new species of insect

Basically, there is a fruit fly, Rhagoletis pomonella, native to Eastern North America that lays its eggs on the ripe fruits of native hawthorns. It is part of a whole group of species of flies that each go after a different kind of fruit – blueberries, snowberries and dogwoods each have their own species of closely related fly. When Europeans arrived and introduced non-native apple trees, the hawthorn fly started laying eggs on the apples as well, and got the name of apple maggot. But here’s the crazy bit: The hawthorn flies didn’t just expand their diet, they actually evolved to a new race, a new species in the making, that live exclusively on apples.

These flies have very brief life spans, so the adults must emerge at exactly the right time or there won’t be ripe fruit to lay their eggs on. But apples and hawthorns ripen nearly a month apart, so the apple targeting flies have evolved to emerge several weeks earlier than the original hawthorn flies. In addition to diverging in time of emergence, the two types of flies have changed their preferences in smells. The original fly is attracted to the smell of hawthorns, and avoids the smell of apples, while the new flies show the exact opposite behavior, each homing in on their target host, be it new or old.

The final piece of these two types of flies becoming two different species is that they each now mate only on the fruit of their tree of choice. This is important, because now the apple and hawthorn flies don’t interbreed due to their preference of mating location, and being a reproductively isolated group is the most commonly accepted definition of a species. Now the two types of flies will continue to diverge, as the lack of interbreeding means more and more genetic differences between the two populations will build up over time.
All of this is very cool, and has been long understood. Here’s the EVEN COOLER part from this new research: The divergence of one kind of fruit fly into two is cascading through the ecosystem. There are three species of parasitioid wasps that lay their eggs on the hawthorn fruit fly that have diverge into new forms that specialize in the new apple fruit fly. Just like the fruit flies, the timing of their life cycle, their preference and avoidance of the smell of the ripe fruit, and their mating habits have shifted to create different apple and hawthorn specific races. So where there was one fruit fly and three wasps, the introduction of the European apple has lead to the evolution of one additional fruit fly, and three new wasps.

I’m not sure what import this has, if any, in the ever raging native-versus-exotic debate in horticulture, but it sure is cool – the evolution of new species happening right before our eyes.

Joseph Tychonievich

Ray’s 2015 Tomatoes

I thought I’d share some of the new varieties of tomatoes I’m growing this year, along with some old favorites.

First up is a picture of a new variety from Dr. Harry Klee’s research at the U. of Florida called Garden Gem, along with Blush from Artisan Seeds.

Garden Gem is a new hybrid, poised to take the fresh market grocery store tomatoes on. Same disease resistance, same shipping quality, but with much improved flavor. Dr. Klee describes the research at his site:

The first step in a flavor improvement program starts with a simple question: what do people like and what’s in the varieties that people do like? In order to answer this question, we took a giant step back to “heirloom” tomatoes.

Blush has been around for a few years, an open pollinated variety with a great history of breeding, since 8 year old Alex was instrumental in choosing its parent lines.

The year that the cross that created Blush was made, Alex participated in setting up crosses for our annual winter crossing list. He chose 3 of the 19 crosses to be made that year, after the other 16 had been established (by a PhD-holding plant breeder with big plans). The striking outcome is that about 90% of the value from that year came from Alex’s 3 crosses. The progeny from his crosses continue to permeate most everything we are doing.

Both have something in common in that one of the progenitors for each is a variety called Maglia Rosa.

Note also the meatiness of Garden Gem … I think it will make a great all-purpose variety for the home gardener for canning and sauces, as well as fresh eating.

Another aspect, which you can’t tell very well from the picture of Garden Gem, is the faint yellow striping in the skin, and some later fruits that have a hint of a nipple on the blossom end.

GardenGemGreenTiger — Top Garden Gem Next Maglia Rosa Bottom Green Tiger

Next up, another Garden Gem, followed by Maglia Rosa, and then Green Tiger. See hints of vestigal “nipple” alluded to earlier in the Garden Gem.

Cute little feller … a Currant Tomato. Actually, a different, but very close relative, and source of much research and study, since it still grows wild in the Andean mountains … PITA to pick, but great “conversation piece” when used as a garnish. Solanum pimpinellifolium

We grew these as part of a variety trial a few years back … more for the novelty. But when we did a Brix test that year, it was the highest recorded.

A little odd, since the flavor is not in the least “sweet” … coulda been just more concentrated. Dunno, really.

AuntRubyGermanGreen — Aunt Ruby’s German Green Heirloom

Aunt Ruby’s German Green. One of my long term favorites. It’s a more tangy than sweet heirloom variety that stays green when ripe.

Green Zebra … an open pollinated variety bred by Tom Wagner and introduced in 1983 according to Wikipedia.

Green when ripe, and with yellow striping. Dunno why most of mine this year are exhibiting a lobed shape, rather than perfectly round.

I may have to buy new seeds next year.

Another hybrid from the research lab of Dr. Harry Klee of the University of Florida. This one is named Garden Treasure.

I don’t have any information about its progenitors, like its companion Garden Gem.

Beautiful, baseball-sized fruit. Very slight indication of green shoulders, and with the same faint yellow stripe as Garden Gem. Also a heavy fruit, very meaty.

And very good flavor. Pretty good balance between tart and sweet. I can see these being popular with fresh market growers.

I sourced the seeds from Dr. Klee’s efforts by making a small donation to his research program at the University of Florida. The idea was brought to my attention by his colleague, Dr. Kevin Folta in this blog post.

We can look forward to new, satisfying varieties that merge the best of production traits with the historical successes that delighted the senses. These are new heirlooms, and they open an exciting peek of what is coming in plant genetic improvement.

Here are more details of the story and the individual varieties! I hope you order some seeds and give your feedback to Dr. Klee so he can build your ideas into the future of tomatoes!

I often complained about the flavorless red things that you find in grocery stores, so here was a way to support researchers working to overcome that.

And Dr. Klee is not alone. Rutgers University went about restoring the old fresh market hybrid varieties that gave “Jersey Tomatoes” their deserved reputation.

Read about Ramapo, Moreton, and a processing tomato at the Rutgers site Rediscovering the Jersey Tomato .

And there are other research programs at Purdue, University of Michigan and Israel conducting similar efforts. No doubt there are others.

The future of good tasting grocery store, and fresh market tomatoes seems bright.