[Sca-cooks] Tomatoes, the Spread of the Red

[Daniel Phelps]

I've been fallowing this thread with a bit of bemused interest especially
the threadlet about the tomato's spread into Africa.  A little story that
may shed some light.  There was an incident may years back when I worked of
the City of Houston Health Department.  It seemed that there was a fracus at
one of the waste treatment plants to which the police were called.  Some of
the crew had started a fight by throwing vegetables at other workers.  The
vegies were tomatoes.  It seems that the seeds of the tomato plant are very
hardy and designed by nature to pass through the gut of whom so ever eats
the fruit.  Thus they grow in frequent abundance at sewage treatment plants.
That being said I see the following likely series of events.  Tomatoes get
introduced to a new continent, eaten and the seeds excreated either by
people or animals and birds.  After a few dozen generations of this spreads
them widely from the coast, they would seem to be every where and "wild".

Daniel