Tomato Ethnobotany

[steev]

I would only offer experience in Guatemala, where I can't imagine anyone ever raised transplants.

[keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.)]

I once watched a documentary that visited Peru. They mentioned that similar to potato diversity that Peru also had great tomato diversity. They mentioned because of globalization, locals were abandoning their traditional varieties for larger modern varieties in large droves. The only tomato I saw was the ribbed Mexican tomato.

But here is a map I made from TGRC data. biolumo.com/index.php?title=File:All_wild_tomatoes_map.png

Basically Chili, Peru, Ecuador are the ones you should focus on. Maybe Bolivia, Argentina, and Columbia if you push it. Though I suspect that if tomatoes made it to the Galapagos islands then perhaps there are undiscovered wild tomatoes on the islands of Panama and Costa Rica.

[steev]

Yes, Mayans; they also are fond of a feral currant tomato that they grind into a salsa, very tasty.

[keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.)]

Precolumbian I would imagine were mostly pimpinellifolium and were partly ferral as they apparently readily reseed from fallen fruit. I imagine if they were planted on purpose that they were planted whole fruits or dried fruits (and crushed) when planted. So yeah, direct seeded but with a different method. Hard to say how they saved tiny tomato seeds back then, but that's how I would do it. Will look for any info I can find, but I imagine other than talking to a precolumbian person or their descendant directly you wouldn't find much. Perhaps look for old European records from Spain or Italy but those are likely to be in Spanish or Italian and not in English.

[philagardener]

Apr 26, 2018 15:04:48 GMT -5 keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) said:

So yeah, direct seeded but with a different method. Hard to say how they saved tiny tomato seeds back then, but that's how I would do it.

I remember many, many years ago being surprised seeing municipal sewage composting piles covered with thousands tomato plants. 

So tomato seeds are still being moved around and planted!  With nitrogen, no less! 

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I grow Solanum galapagense. I would feel very comfortable calling it "the upright tomato". The growth habit was more like a shrub than a vine. The stems were kinda woody.

Solanum galapagense

link to high resolution

And while I was taking photos, here's one that is descended from [Fern X S habrochaites]

Link to high resolution