My tomatoes have finally set and I can definitely tell which are the Black Cherries and which are the Barcelona tomatoes. I keep a closer eye on the tomatoes than any of my other plants which is probably why I discovered the siamese cherry tomatoes so early.
When the first one emerged I though: what the heck?!
When the second on cropped up I though: OK, what are the odds of that?
When I noticed a third, I decided to google.
And discovered that it seems to be a bit of a normal phenomenon in the homegrown tomato world. My google search for siamese tomato came up with 341,000 results (OK – not all of them were really tomato related)! The first page was all blogs from home growers who were doing the same thing as me: wondering about their strange siamese tomato.
The phenomenon is actually called fascination or cresting. The technical explanation has something to do with the growing tip, growing in an elongated fashion and contorting the tissue of either the fruit, flower head, root or stem. It happens in many different types of fruits and even flowers. There are many reasons it happens: mutation in the growing cells, bacterial infections, mite or insect attack, chemical or mechanical damage. Some people even raise certain plans because of their ability to consistently produce fascinated flower-heads!
I guess this is one of those things that you get to experience when you grow your own. There is no way that you would find the mutant, for lack of a better word, tomatoes in the grocery store. And that is what makes is so much fun. You can grow vegetables you would never find at the grocery store or realize that your fruit and veg doesn’t have to be “picture perfect” in order for it to be mighty tasty.
Take eggplants, for example, odds are that your grocery store only carries oblong fat deep purple fruit. But there are so many different types of eggplants! Some are even white with stripes others are long and skinny and are more lilac than aubergine. And sometimes those varieties that you don’t see in the grocery store are even tastier!
And since I have 3 siamese tomato, and we all know that old wives tale about good things happening in threes, I am going to take my twinned tomatoes as a good sign.
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