I am idly pursuing a potato breeding project (with the rather unlikley goal of producing a new commercial variety); so I’m harvesting seeds from my first set of crosses and they come packaged in a little green fruit about an inch across that looks very like a tomato (not surprising really, they are related).
I allowed the fruit to ripen fully on my windowsill and it turned a pale creamy colour, but the smell; it’s not entirely unpleasant, but it’s incredibly strong and persistent (I’d describe it as a kind of highly perfumed soapy melon aroma - I’ve separated out the seeds and now I can’t get the smell off my hands.
Anyway, my question: It seems fairly clear that this aroma is produced to attract some animal that will distribute the seeds; what animal would normally seek out and eat the fruits of the wild ancestor of the potato in it’s native habitat? (rocky hillside forests in South America, I believe).
I don’t know for certain, but in all likelyhood, some species of bird. Fruits that are unappealing, distateful, or poisonous to mammals are usualy adapted to dispersal by birds. Birds tend to travel more, and so are more beneficial evolutionarily for the plants. Birds have very few taste buds, and so are not put off by distateful fruits. Example: hot peppers. Humans are the only mammals that willingly eat them (possibly to satisfy our masochistic side) but birds eat them without flinching. Many birds have adapted behaviors to deal with poisonous alkaloids that impart a bitter tast to many fruits and seeds,i.e. by consuming clay from riverbanks to absorb the alkaloids. The fruit of many solanaceous plants (Potato, nightshade, belladonna, jimsonweed) are poisonous and foul-smelling, and depend on birds to distribute them.
Having experienced mild effects of eating the green skin (many of us have), I think I’ll leave the berries to the birds.
I am one of those who like this sort of thing, and this is the sort of thing I like.
Peace,
mangeorge
