In week 4 I decided to do a search on the parts of a tomato fruit and I took a look at an open tomato fruit. I simply took a sharp knife, cutting board and two tomato fruits. I opened one up in the transverse direction and the second one I opened in longitudinal direction. I took photos of each section and labeled the transverse section using MS Paint.
Transverse Direction Longitudinal Direction
The tomato fruit is classified in the USA as a vegetable since it served with the main course not after the main course but botanically speaking it is classified as a berry apparently this issue was taken up and dealt with by the US Supreme court to settle tariff issues concerning the crop. [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ ] TomatoThe berry is defined as fleshy with few to many seeded, fruit coat soft and fleshy throughout. [ http://www.victoryseeds.com/catalog/vegetable/tomato/tomato_growing.html ]
The outer skin of the tomato plant is called the Epidermis. The inner core is called the Columella. The white fleshy portion after the Epidermis is called the Vascular Bundle. The extension of the vascular bundle that goes towards the Columella is called the Septa. The chamber filled with gelatinous membranes are called the Locular cavity this is where the seeds are found in. The connection of the Seeds to the Columella are called the placenta Tissue. [ http://www-plb.ucdavis.edu/labs/rost/Tomato/Reproductive/anat.html ] The Tomato fruit I opened up is called a multilocular tomato fruit since it has three locular cavities. Tomato fruits with two locular cavities are called bilocular.
I believe that the placenta tissue and columella provides the necessary nourishment to the seeds as the small plant develops. The presence of gelatinous membrane for the tomato fruit is something I have work on why this is the case when bell peppers have the same structure but no such gelatinous membranes.
Week 5 Observations
The tomato specimens grown in my backyard are now around 69 centimeters high with a stem diameter of 0.9 cm at the base of the plant. Comparing the tomato plants placed the ground and those that where left untransplanted there is a considerable difference in their development. I took another photo of the transplanted plant along side the untransplanted plant.
69 cm Transplanted Plant
Untransplanted and Transplanted Tomato Plants.When I compared the data I had on the plants during the past few weeks I come up with a the graph shown below:
I have been wondering about the sudden rise in the slope of the growth. It could be perhaps an issue with my data taking or it is directly proportional to the amount of energy available to build new parts hence there could be a relationship between the leaves present in the plant.
I also checked for the presence of the the cotyledon leaves on my plants and surely enough in most plants the cotyledon leaves where missing. Their stems are still there but the leaves have fallen off. I looked closer and found one plant with the cotyledons still on it. Look the lowest leaf on the picture shown below there is one leave left.
My father was by chance had been planting other tomato plants for production purposes and they had just emerged a week ago. I took some samples to help me understand more about their root system.
Reference materials told me that the tomato plants have two kinds of roots the tap root and lateral root. The tap root in my specimen is the thick root labeled as B in the photo shown above. The lateral roots are those marked as A they are thinner but longer in this 2-3 week old plant.
In another 2-3 week old plant I could see that few lateral roots had developed.
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