Simpson Fan Grows Tomacco (2003) | Hacker News Reader

Simpson Fan Grows Tomacco (2003)

simpsonsarchive.com

142 pointspipeline_peak98 comments

I was curious about what happened since the write-up ends abruptly before revealing the testing results.

Wikisimpsons has a bit more info sourced from DVD commentary revealing that the tomacco had no nicotine in it: https://simpsonswiki.com/wiki/Tomacco#Behind_the_Laughter

Wikidoc has even more detail but no sources: https://wikidoc.org/index.php/Tomacco

That's not entirely surprising. The whole point of grafting is to clone the plant you're taking scion wood from. Are there any examples where choice of rootstock can affect things like flavor? I've heard of rootstock affecting things like vigor, disease resistance, and cold hardiness, but never anything like taste or psychoactivity.

Tobacco plants produce nicotine in their roots, so it would have been possible that the tomato received some.

According to the wikidocs article, there was some in the leaves, but none found in the fruits.

There are sources here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Products_produced_from_The_Sim...

I just figured the writer tasted it and perished.

That doesn't sound reliable. Tomatoes all have some naturally occurring nicotine, I would be surprised one grafted to a tobacco plant somehow has...none?

The Scientific American article in question: https://gwern.net/doc/biology/1959-robinson.pdf

> I am going to try to schedule the testing done this Friday, October 24th.

So WHY didn't you open up your editor on the 25th and let us the World know about the results (or lack thereof)???

I hate so much the utter lack of discipline and follow-up of the average internet person :-( (of course in a tongue in cheek way)

This happens so many times... who hasn't found an interesting forum topic, sometimes describing exactly the same problem we're having, with a promising resolution, but which never actually arrived?

https://xkcd.com/979

I really felt like shaking this person like the xkcd comic guy shakes the screen...

It's one thing to talk about something and just casually never following up. That's bad enough already.

But giving a precise date, and promising a follow-up, then never doing it... that's purely evil! Only valid excuse is a life-altering accident or something serious like that. Otherwise I'll hate you and will want to call you things

...shouting at my screen in my room's solitude.

> sometimes describing exactly the same problem we're having, with a promising resolution

Exactly!

I've been trying to perfect my tomacco grafts for 20 years at this point and was unable to find any information.

The nerve of the author!

"I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which this margin is too narrow to contain."

Great quote!!! Thanks for the reminder that the first case of such disrespect to the reader came way earlier than internet forums :)

i have this problem with posts that puport to answer "how-do-i-do this" questions on Windows and other desktops:

me: how do i do X?

them: just click on "find" and then...

me: but where is "find"??? i have quite heavily modified desktop.

if these people posted a screenshot instead of describing the gui interaction in text, i could almost certainly work it out.

Reason n to not customise anything.

me: I am trying to do this using that and that says this. What does this mean?

them: Why would you want to do that?

The absolute worst is situations like this:

User: I have a problem I haven't been able to google. Whenever this very specific situation occurs, I am having this problem. Any advice?

Other Users: (Lots of ideas, no solution.)

User: Nevermind, I figured it out, thanks!

...WHAT DID YOU DO TO FIX IT?

> ...WHAT DID YOU DO TO FIX IT?

I think the general assumption when the reply lacks specificity is that it’s something embarrassingly routine like “I checked to make sure that the device was plugged in” or some variant thereof.

It’s not a 100% safe assumption, but I think this is the answer more often than not.

Even telling the world that can be useful because what is embarrassingly routine for you might be entirely unknown to someone else. Plus it is simply polite.

Honestly the best part of troubleshooting is when I find out I was just being a massive dumbass the entire time. I go tell my team, friends, wife, etc, “I fixed it, I was just a dumbass, all I had to do was [thing]” and I revel in it because that shit is funny.

The angrier I am while troubleshooting, the funnier that reveal is for everyone.

I regularly inform my coworkers of my dumbass status. It’s funny and keeps me humble

I like to pretend they entirely changed solutions, like switching from Java to PHP or the other way around.

The lies we tell ourselves…

Where I have encountered this, the path to a solution requires discovering that the problem is a generic error message that has an unbelievable number of different possible causes. And in the process of solving that, the specific problem was incredibly specific.

For example Django is very good at giving a small number of (useless) error messages for a wide variety of things that can keep it from starting up properly.

I’ve secured access to a Tomacco plant. I’ll let you know tomorrow what my findings are.

Just wait till you see this: grafting tomatoes and eggplant on tree Solanaceae (tomato relatives) in Italy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMTQeiLxABg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUO1vTrMRbc

You get the benefits of the tree's deep roots and ease of harvest. Even if you don't know Italian the videos are amazing.

Isn’t wild Solanaceae a deadly poison in most cases?

This is why you don’t just copy and paste I researched answers from SO.

Some are and some aren't. The key question is whether the fruits grown on grafted branches have the toxins. There's no definitive study. This rootstock appears to be S. torvum. The gardener who's doing it has been doing it for years apparently with no ill health effects. Might be worth someone studying both his produce and his health to find out.

You can cut plants and fuse them just like that?

Yes, it’s called grafting. My neighbor had a single tree which grew oranges, lemons, and limes using this.

I have one with three different types of pears

And isn't it also the deal that most of our citrus fruits are just weirdo combos of like 4 citrus primitives or something?

Brassica are the same way. Turnips, cabbage, bok choi, cauliflower, mustard, rapeseed, Brussel sprouts, kale, etc. Effectively all the same species -- hybrids or cultivars of a few wild ancestors that hybridize easily.

Yup. Wikipedia has some good visualisations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citrus_taxonomy#Hybrids

It doesn't work in all cases but potatoes and tomatoes are closely related (potato fruits exist and are very poisonous, they look like cherry tomatoes).

Orchards typically graft branches of the desired apple variety onto rootstock of an apple tree that has the size characteristics they want - typically, smaller trees as they can fit more per hectare and i's easier to pick if the branches don't grow as tall.

The potato, the tomato and the aubergine (eggplant) are all genus Solanum. They are close relatives.

The genus is related to the European nightshade family, colloquially known as "deadly nightshade" with good reason. When tomatos were first brought to Europe from the Americas, they were used purely decoratively as everyone believe they would be toxic as they were clearly similar to the highly poisonous nightshades.

One of the only uses of nightshade was for an extract to paralyse the muscles of the iris, leading to very dilated pupils and big dark eyes, considered a sign of beauty in women. Thus the Latin name: "belladonna" -- literally, "bella" (beautiful) "donna" (lady).

Yes, grafting, i.e. this method of plant propagation, is useful either for plants for which simpler cloning methods do not work or for providing various useful properties, like resistance to certain plant diseases.

Grafting has probably been invented somewhere closer to Central Asia around four to five thousand years ago and then it has spread through Western Asia and through Europe, about at the same time with the spread of the domesticated horses and with the spread of the Indo-European languages.

Before the invention of grafting, there were only a little more than a handful of cultivated species of fruit trees, i.e. mostly those which produce clones naturally (e.g. grape vines, olive trees, fig trees, date palms and a few others). By using grafting, a large number of additional fruit trees could be cultivated, starting with apples and pears.

The reason why grafting is necessary is that in most cases the trees grown from the seeds produced by a tree with big and sweet fruits may have small and sour fruits. To preserve the properties of the original tree, it must be cloned. By using grafting on an appropriate rootstock any tree can be cloned.

> The reason why grafting is necessary is that in most cases the trees grown from the seeds produced by a tree with big and sweet fruits may have small and sour fruits.

This. Any apples grown for consumption are from grafts. Apple trees grown from seed are wild or experimental to try to find a new graft, or to be the graft base. I was amazed when I heard that planting a Honeycrisp seed would not get you more Honeycrisps in your yard. Cloning only!

I've read a similar thing about pink dogwood, where growing a seedling from it will only have a small chance of being another pink dogwood, more likely than not producing a white one. Because of that they are typically cloned.

A follow-on fun fact is that the American legend of Johnny Appleseed makes no sense in this light if you assume the apples were for eating. They’re fine for making Applejack, though.

Plant immune systems are not like those of animals. You can often just slap parts together and they will meld. This likely evolved from plants literally growing on top of each other, such as a small plant growing on top of a log. Neither plant would do well if an immune reaction was initiated every time two root systems met.

Yeah, and I think it’s the only way to get any kind of apple tree.

My grandparents had an apple tree that had ~6 different varieties of apples growing off of it from all the grafts that they'd done to it, was neat to see as a kid.

Some people go a bit crazy, here is a man who has grafted 250ish varieties. Sorry about the Daily Mail link.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2437247/amp/250-var...

Yes, in fact most roses and fruit trees are grafted onto different root stock. Most citrus is on sour orange stock. https://citrusrootstocks.org/rootstock-cultivars/ In the case of roses, this is the hideous Dr Huey variety, which will often try and take over the grafted rose https://www.rosenotes.com/2012/03/dr-huey-you-sucker-you.htm...

Why is the Dr Huey hideous, other than it being misused by humans in odd grafting procedures?

Just a personal opinion, and one shared by many. The cultivar was bred by a dentist named Huey not for looks or scent like most roses, but for the rootstock. It tends to grow long unorganized canes very prone to disease, and the flowers are small with few petals. We have 32 rose bushes, and every spring I have to watch out for Dr Huey taking over.

Thank you, that makes sense. Are there animal/eukaryotic versions of the Dr Huey (GMO invaders?)

I don’t understand the question

Is there a bacteria/animal/fungi equivalent of rootstock that selective breeding has used?

I know we study some long lived germlines of E. coli for example. And how about mushroom farms?

I see. One of the two common GMO types is BT, which is a bacteria that produces a protein which is an insecticide. It is widely used in organic farming, especially for caterpillar control. I use it on my edible plants in late summer when we get a lot of caterpillars. In GMO varieties, the BT gene that produces the protein is grafted on to a popular cultivar so they produce their own insecticide.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacillus_thuringiensis

Fun fact: all over the world vineyards use an American variant of grapes for their rootstock and graft their preferred European/Peruvian/etc grapes on top. This makes them more disease resistant and in some cases means the cultivar of European grapes can survive at all after disease had almost wiped them out.

All your citrus and apples from the store are like this, and why they don't grow true to seed. The seeds are open pollinated by whatever is around but the fruit was from a single plant hand selected dozens or more years ago and produces that exact fruit over and over again. It would take hundreds of years to 'stabilize' those traits in the seeds and in that time, you'd probably find another great variety and keep that around to graft to other plants.

I read a, possibly mythical, story about a group that surreptitiously grafted various fruit branches onto the shade trees lining some streets in a major city. Several years later the mess on the sidewalk caused the city to cut them off.

Grafting generally only works within families. I.e. you can't graft a chestnut onto an apple tree.

I doubt many (if any) shade trees would support a fruit.

That said, families can be surprisingly large. Most citrus all come from the same four parent plants and you can mix most of them. Apples and plums are also closely related

My bet would be on japanese crabapple

Where I live there are a lot of non-fruiting cherry and plum trees planted for shade, so I can imagine people grafting on a fruit bearing branch here and there.

I didn't consider that, thank you for your perspective

https://weburbanist.com/2015/10/22/guerrilla-grafting-public... maybe?

The use of grafting for grapevines has become necessary only after the insect phylloxera has been brought accidentally from USA to Britain and France at the beginning of the second half of the 19th century and then it has devastated most European vineyards.

The American vines are resistant to phylloxera.

Previously, grapevine was one of the few sources of sweet fruits which did not require grafting, because it propagates naturally through clones.

It's worth noting that there are a handful (like less than 10) vineyards in Europe have escaped infestation so far and thus have their original rootstock:

https://www.decanter.com/features/phylloxera-the-great-escap...

This includes 2 Pinot Noirs in France, 1 Tinta Barroca used to make Port in Portugal, 1 Sangiovese from Italy, 1 Monastrell from Spain, and 4 Nerello Mascalese from Sicily.

There used to be 3 Pinot Noirs in France but one succumbed in 2004 and the Monastrell in Spain is verging on succumbing.

There are also vineyards that have been planted with European rootstock since the infestination of the continent. These include vineyards in Portugal, Sicily, California, Chile, and Australia where soil conditions prevent the bugs from getting to the roots.

Yes. But if you follow the laws of the Torah, you may run into some issues:

https://en.toraland.org.il/beit-midrash/halachic-guides/mitz...

For complicated reasons, this is only strictly checked for grapes and for etrogim AFAIK.

Eating fruit as a strict Jew must be quite difficult.

> But if you follow the laws of the Torah, you may run into some issues

I can can only imagine how difficult it must get if fruit trees get rules like these.

The funny thing is that some combinations of scion and rootstock are permitted only if grafting and planting are performed by a non-Jew.

You can do it yourself and it’s fascinating. I have a black doris plum which seems to refuse all grafts, but my apple tree probably has 10ish varieties growing off it. Most are only able support one apple, but the older grafts should be able to take several this coming season.

I am no expert but all you need is some grafting secateurs, some grafting tape and some twigs from a related tree (same genus). For example, apple or pear will go on the same tree, citrus won’t.

You make sure the grafted twig is about the same size the twig it’s attaching to, bind it up with tape and leave it. The bark grows across cut and strengthens with time.

There are loads of YouTube and website guides, here is one.

https://minnetonkaorchards.com/how-to-graft-an-apple-tree/#:....

I take your 10 and raise ;)

"A horticulturist has managed to nurture a single apple tree which bears 250 different varieties of the fruit."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/science-environment-24348394

How is your life, or anyone's life, made better, by shading someone from doing some interesting and awesome?

Shading something you can quote, that you didn't contribute to, with different numbers makes you happier?

Science shouldn't be just a game, and all progress is welcome.

It certainly wasn't intended to shade, I posted with the intent to show someone who obviously has an interest in something, something that might be of interest. Please check my comments, criticise yes, fairly juvenile sense of humour, check, shade, I hope not!

Every single fruit you eat that has a name (e.g. "Fuji" apple or "Hass" avocado) has been grafted, and is a clone of the original plant, grafted on a rootstock that may have other ideal properties.

Yep, is called grafting.

It does not survive unless both plants are closely related

Aaaah Tomacco!

Slightly off-topic trivia: there is a reference to Tomaccos in the story-mode of the game CoreBreach (https://www.corecode.io/corebreach/). [Probably cannot be obtained anymore for quite a few years now - certainly won't run with modern OSs]. Further references are made to Blade Runner, Soylent Green, Terry Pratchett, etc, etc

There were also a number of hidden Simpson and Family Guy related easter-eggs, none of which were ever discovered.

Do this fan knew that tomatoes have yet nicotine included without any special treatment?

No update since 2003?

It probably had a fatal dose of nicotine.

Or they dilute it with regular tomatoes for their unusually successful pizza chain.

Great, so some day, coworkers will get up at least once an hour for pizza breaks?

I believe that this is the same episode in which Bart, who has brittle bones, drinks Mulk.

Malk

Malk now comes with with "Vitamin R", which is slang for "Rainier Beer" in the Pacific Northwest where Mat Groening went to college.

I believe he was promised dog or better.

People love rats, but they don't want to drink the rats' milk?

Ah, that's the one.

No, that's The PTA Disbands.

This is from 2003. Might want to add (2003) to the headline.

Did it ever turn out to contain nicotine?

Tomato plants already contain nicotine, though in small amounts. Both belong to the nightshade family, and I believe all nightshades produce nicotine.

I find a source useful for claims like these, so here you go: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199308053290619

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