Solanum pimpinillifolium

[William S.]

Solanum pimpinillifolium or currant tomato is a wild species tomato closely related to domestic tomatoes and the two species of tomatoes from the galapagos. The four species cross readily.

In my garden it is one of two wild species that seem to volunteer reasonably well.

I have a few crosses I would like to try with it.

I would like to cross it to the ultra short season 35 DTM variety Sweet Cherriette which itself has a lot of pimpinillifolium genetics but larger fruit. My curiosity is if an even smaller fruit combined with short season genes could produce an even faster but tinier tomato.

I would like to cross it with an exserted stigma variety of tomato to see if I could get a plant with tiny tomatoes that volunteers but frequently produces spontaneous hybrids. Though I've heard exserted pimpinillifolium may already exist.

I would like to try crossing it with Solanum Peruvianum to see if it might have some bridging utility. Probably with pimpinillifolium as the mother.

It might be interesting to cross it with the variety coyote to get yellow fruit in the mix (though this may already exist).

Those are the four crosses I have in mind for pimpinillifolium.

[reed]

Pimpinillifolium is almost a weed in my garden. It's flowers are as tightly closed as can be, but still a random cross somehow happened. Bunches of variations in fruit size and color have showed up. I'v saved seed from some last couple years but haven't planted any as they always pop up anyway.

[William S.]

Books say even tightly closed tomato varieties will cross on occasion if planted very close together. I suspect that in my garden the percentages are very low for that. Maybe you have pollen robber bees or just got lucky.

[Andrew Barney]

I've heard this species is a high outcrosser despite the small closed up flowers. I remember reading about it on that tomato forum once.

Interestingly, i now think that little natural wild tomato cross in my garden was between this species and habrochiates. Instead of cheesmaniae. It ended up ripening to almost red, but not quite and took a very long time to ripen,  which seems different from this parent variety. Not to mention the green stripes.

I guess it's possible it was instead a hybrid with Josephs F2 fern x hab. Cross which also had small closed flowers. Also a possibility.

[William S.]

An pimp type from Andrew and Golden Tressette are both exserted. Interested to see what the outcrossing rate will be.

[Andrew Barney]

Remind me later,  but I still might have some seed from that bee pollinated cross pimp x habrochiates.

[reed]

I'm saving lots of seeds from these this year http://opensourceplantbreeding.org/forum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=229.0;attach=473;image. They are several generations removed from an initial random cross with an unknown domestic. They are very very good, especially if you like sweet tomatoes. They also seem pretty easy to sun dry, I like that.