By Tomsgarden
United Kingdom
Can anyone help to identify this plant. It appeared in my garden last year showing what appeared to be green tomatoes in bunches but flowered like potato plants. When I dug the plants up there were potatoes underneath and I certainly don't recollect planting them. Although all the plants were dug up, they have mysteriously appeared this year again.
- 14 Jul, 2014
Answers
If you leave even a very small potato in the ground, which is very easy to miss when you are digging them up, you'll get another plant from it the following year. They may have grown originally from a potato added to your compost if it hadn't finished rotting when it was added to the bed.
14 Jul, 2014
I got the impression that this was a new type of plant originating from the North East of England in 2013 and also discovered in New Zealand around the same time.
Thanks for you help.
15 Jul, 2014
Easy way to find out is to dig it up and see if it has grown some potatoes. Or just scrape experimentally around the roots a bit if you don't want to dig it up.
15 Jul, 2014
Sorry but it looks like a potato plant to me.
However there was a new species of Solanum described recently (2009) from New South Wales in Australia. Not from North East England or New Zealand though. It has yellow fruits, so wait until yours are ripe and see what colour they turn. Still poisonous though!
15 Jul, 2014
Potatoes and Tomatoes are in the same family, so potato plants produce fruit which looks very much like the familiar tomato, sadly they are very poisonous.
14 Jul, 2014