Fused Blossoms
 

I removed about 7 or 8 fused blossoms from my tomato plants yesterday.All of the Cherokee Purples and Greens and all the the dark tomatoes had them.I think Earl's Faux and Beefsteak too.

Just wondering if anyone knew why this happens.It happens to often at the beginning to be a anomaly.It is obviously something that is meant to happen.


I always assume the plant knows best but in this case I nip them.I have a wild guess that maybe its has something to do with pollination.Maybe a trait from when tomatoes were bee pollinated or something.Maybe putting out huge blossom to alert the bees:lol:

I always leave mine and get the monster tomatoes they produce. I have even heard of people who try to grow the HUGE tomatoes will remove all of the blossoms except a fused one and try to grow one tomato on a plant. I don't do that, but I do think it is fun to have a couple of monsters in the garden. My largest is only 2#.

It seems to happen most often with the early blooms. Beefsteaks are most likely to have compound blossoms and some varieties more than others so genetics plays a role. It happens more in spring and especially when the weather is cool.
KarenO

Also known as megablooms, and here's a link with lots of info,many threads from here at Tomatville.

[url]https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=megablooms+tomato[/url]

And the best book on megablooms by Marv Meissner,a retired cardiologist whom I know very well.He used to come here to Tville,but interest was limited so he stayed mainly at those sites which featured large vegetables.

[url]https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=Marv+book+about+competition+size+tomatoes[/url]

Carolyn

If I recall it is mostly the flower buds being exposed to night temps below 55. This is while the tissue for the buds are still forming inside the stem, meaning that the exposure happened before you even have the flowers externally present to see. Might explain why you see these on early flowers when the temps are lower.
Genetics plays a part too as mentioned.

I usually clip them off if I have a good fruit set because the tomatoes they produce though usually larger than normal are not great slicers and are just plain messy to deal with. They frequently ripen very unevenly so one or two lobes will be over ripe and another may be still green. Of course I miss a few and I also like to get an occasional monster for showing off.

Bill

Agree wit PH cool temps while bud is forming.

I used to get quite a few of them up in PNW. but down here in NC i have not noticed any or maybe I am not paying much attention to it. We didn't have cool weather here. Maybe that is why the incident of megabloom/cat face is rare here. Today , May 1st I picked 4 ripe tomatoes. No cool weather here.

Sort of found the answer. It is called a fasciated blossom. Seems like it is just a gene common in beefsteak tomatoes.

[FONT=serif]
[/FONT][FONT=serif][FONT=serif]Fasciation in tomato flowers was described first in the 1920’s; a 1948 paper from the National Institutes of Health described the genetics of fasciated beefsteak tomatoes. In botany, fasciation is an event out of the ordinary, yet somewhat common.[/FONT]

[URL]https://www.unce.unr.edu/areas/southern/files/pdf/columns/Fasciation.pdf[/URL]


[/FONT]

After having more time to read about fasciation, seems everyone was right about cold stress or any sort of stress possibly being a factor. Also mentioned was promoting fast growth of the plant which I think we all do.

But the main reason is genetics where some sort of mutation occurred. Thanks for all the replies. It helped in the search.:)

Edit to say if Carolyn's links pointed to fasciation I didn't see it because I have Google blocked in my hosts file :)

I have about a dozen of these megablooms on my Cherokee Purple right now, but none of the other varieties right next to it has even one.

[QUOTE=seaeagle;636415]After having more time to read about fasciation, seems everyone was right about cold stress or any sort of stress possibly being a factor. Also mentioned was promoting fast growth of the plant which I think we all do.

But the main reason is genetics where some sort of mutation occurred. Thanks for all the replies. It helped in the search.:)

Edit to say if Carolyn's links pointed to fasciation I didn't see it because I have Google blocked in my hosts file :)[/QUOTE]

The last link I put up was the result of a Google search, not google itself and there were many links listed,here's one from Tville, which I know you can read.

[url]http://www.tomatoville.com/showthread.php?t=32478[/url]

Carolyn

[QUOTE=OzoneNY;636457]I have about a dozen of these megablooms on my Cherokee Purple right now, but none of the other varieties right next to it has even one.[/QUOTE]
Last year all my CP tomatoes were from megabloom and few cat faced

Cold weather would certainly explain why we have a lot of fused blossoms on our tomato plants! I don't mind though - I never pinch them. If we vibrate the blossoms we usually get a nice shaped large tomato. A lot of them are boat shaped too. They still slice up nice for a sandwich!

Nice shaped CP - Gardeneer - you should win something for that!

I'm not convinced the cold theory is foolproof. Sure, certain conditions accentuate the problem, like humidity, but the first bloom is a megabloom on certain varieties no matter what.
I had late plants that spent their life in great temperatures and they all had it.