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The Cumato (Cucumber-Tomato)
Status: Undetermined
image The Alvin Sun-Advertiser reports on a rare hybrid found by a local gardener — a tomato-cucumber. They're calling it a 'Cumato':
Mario Rodriguez may have made history. According to Rodrigues, he found a specimen on a cucumber plant that was situated close to his tomato vines, Rodriguez plucked the interesting vegetable that looked like a normal tomato (right) but was attached to one of his cucumber plants. He has yet to name the hybrid and there is apparently no record of such a plant.
Unfortunately the photo of Rodriguez holding the cumato is pretty bad. You can't see any details of the rare vegetable. I also want to know if he's cut it open. What's inside of it? Is it simply a tomato, or is it a combination of both? For now I'm skeptical of this. (Thanks to 't' for the link)
Categories: Food
Posted by Alex on Sat Jul 01, 2006
Comments (31)
More from the Hoax Museum Archives:
I'm calling b.s. on this; tomatoes and cucumbers aren't even in the same order. It would be like finding a human/cat hybrid.
Posted by Citizen Premier  on  Sat Jul 01, 2006  at  03:26 PM
Wait, you're saying we can't have human/cat hybrids. Well that's my life goal down the drain.
Posted by sandwich maker  on  Sat Jul 01, 2006  at  04:10 PM
Whether or not it's real, I think I must point out:
Most unfortune name ever.
Posted by Soldant  on  Sun Jul 02, 2006  at  02:30 AM
I agree, someone's brain wasn't switched on when they decided on the name.
Posted by Nettie  on  Sun Jul 02, 2006  at  04:25 AM
He coould have grafted it.
Posted by LaMa  on  Sun Jul 02, 2006  at  11:16 AM
OK, LaMa, try grafting a tomato plant onto a cucumber vine, and then call me when it grows a tomato.

>snicker<
Posted by Big Gary  on  Sun Jul 02, 2006  at  01:10 PM
I don't know if simply lying about where you got a tomato rises to the level of "hoax" but that's pretty much all that's here.
Posted by JoeDaJuggler  on  Sun Jul 02, 2006  at  03:04 PM
If a tomato and cucumber hybridised, it would be the plants grown from the seeds that would have odd-looking fruit. The cucumber flower supposedly fertilised by the tomato would still be a normal cucumber. Not so much a hoax as a bunch of folks who don't understand genetics. Hybrid traits show up in the offspring, not in the parent that got fertilised!

More likely it was a natural graft where a tomato vine was rubbing against a cucumber vine and they fused.
Posted by Louise  on  Sun Jul 02, 2006  at  11:54 PM
Yeah, the guy was probably more confused than trying to pul a hoax.
Posted by Citizen Premier  on  Mon Jul 03, 2006  at  01:20 AM
...I guess I can just ditto most the responses here.
Posted by Maegan  on  Mon Jul 03, 2006  at  06:29 AM
Forget cumatos... what I want is some tomacco!
Posted by Kat  on  Mon Jul 03, 2006  at  10:14 AM
You people think too small.

Imagine grafting a tomato to the spaghetti tree! Add a bit of garlic and olive oil and you're one step closer to the perfect food plant.
Posted by Charybdis  on  Mon Jul 03, 2006  at  12:29 PM
Reminds me of the Simpsons "tomacco". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomacco
Posted by Leland  on  Mon Jul 03, 2006  at  01:46 PM
Tomacco is actually possible, because tomatoes and tobacco belong to the same family (the Solanacae or nightshade family). You could graft a tomato top onto a tobacco rootstock or vice versa. It might also be possible to cross-pollinate the two species and produce a viable hybrid, although I don't know if anyone has tried this experiment. Whether such a hybrid plant would produce smokable leaves or edible fruits is another question, however (answer: probably not).

It's long been a favorite garden stunt to graft a tomato plant onto a potato rootstock to grow "pomatoes," or to splice a tomato branch into a pepper bush to get a plant that grows peppers on one branch and tomatoes on another, and so on. You could make a plant that would grow tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant on different branches, with potatoes underground, and have a pretty good stew from one plant. Then could you pick off a "tomacco" leaf and smoke it after dinner? Well, remember that regular tobacco has to be cured and treated pretty extensively before people smoke it.
Posted by Big Gary  on  Mon Jul 03, 2006  at  02:15 PM
Never mind tomacco, have you folks never heard of "smoking tomatoes"? It's what students grow on windowsills in shared houses. Or at least they used to when I was a student. The plants were cannabis. Students fixed red baubles to the tomato-like foliage so passers by thought the plants were indoor tomatoes. The plants were always referred to in conversation as smoking tomatoes.
Posted by Louise  on  Tue Jul 04, 2006  at  12:08 AM
The smoking tomatoes idea would seem to depend on having neighbors who lack a good grasp of botany.
Posted by Big Gary  on  Tue Jul 04, 2006  at  09:03 AM
http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~wenling/

Someone with too much time...
Posted by Daniel  on  Tue Jul 04, 2006  at  11:09 AM
More likely it was a natural graft where a tomato vine was rubbing against a cucumber vine and they fused.
Posted by Louise in London on Sun Jul 02, 2006 at 09:54 PM
=====================================
I doubt that this would occur; there's little genetic affinity. Even if you were to carefully splice them, the fused attachment would quickly wither and die, in my opinion.
Posted by SoxSweepAgain  on  Wed Jul 05, 2006  at  07:19 AM
Tomatoes and cucumbers crossbreeding, not likely.
(As has been said before, they're just not related enough.)
My bet is on a tomato that just looks weird. It happens from time to time.

But apparently, you can crossbreed cucumbers and cantelope! http://apnews.myway.com//article/20060709/D8IOD3800.html

(Who knew?)
Posted by Captain DaFt  on  Mon Jul 10, 2006  at  06:58 AM
Cucumbers, melons, watermelons, gourds, and luffas are all members of the family Cucurbitae, so they are much more closely related (of course) to each other than any of them are to tomatoes.
Some types of "cucumbers," such as Armenian or "snake" cucumbers, actually belong to the same species as canteloupes.
Posted by Big Gary, ever pedantic  on  Wed Jul 12, 2006  at  05:36 PM
Contrary to many of your comments, I have to tell you, we have a cucumber/tomato plant in our garden this year. The vine is like a cucumber vine with the fruit round, hard and pale yellow at this time. Not sure when to harvest it. My next door neighbor gave it to us and for sure it looks like a hybrid of these two plants. However, it may just look like a hybrid and actually be a cucumber
Posted by Joan E. Dill  on  Sat Aug 12, 2006  at  04:52 PM
I've got a handful of them growing in my garden right now. The inside look like cuke. The outside is redish/orange and has spines like a cuke.

I haven't eaten one yet, so I'm unsure of how they taste.

It is the strangest thing I've ever seen.

If you want detailed pictures let me know.
Posted by Matt Phillips  on  Sun Sep 24, 2006  at  09:29 AM
grafting is not a valid tranmissing mean of caracters
Posted by barry  on  Sat Jan 26, 2008  at  01:10 AM
Well it is posibel because there seeds Germinate the same way
Posted by Sean Snyder  on  Thu Nov 12, 2009  at  08:55 AM
Hey, it's worth trying. In fact, it would be cool to get a list of plants that we can experiment cross grafting on.
Posted by Chris  on  Mon Mar 01, 2010  at  07:13 PM
The one thing that everyone in here isn't thinking about is that anything can be fused as long as it is done in the right manner. Like Seedless Watermellons were not seedless when they started out. They were planted as a seeded water mellon but intended to be a seedless watermellon on account of what they were planted by. or how they were planted in the field.

Just like Grapes. They carry the same patterns. I do however agree with some of you about the picture above because the things that he is holding in his hands are too much alike but also too much different. Cucumbers are Green and are long and narrow at which point tomato's are round and red. Are you going to tell me that the things in his hand are both tomato's and cucumbers combined? Or, are they one ripe tomato and one that has not ripened yet?
Posted by Brian  on  Tue Mar 23, 2010  at  09:50 PM
looks like a lemon cukes to me.
Posted by aly  on  Mon May 24, 2010  at  10:41 AM
I was referred here due to my Cumatoes. Until now I have never heard of such. Funny I picked almost the same name. I have the story of how mine came to be on my facebook page. I sat my cucumber plants on my container I grow my Tomatoes in. When I went back to plant my cucumbers, the roots had grown into the soil. I did not want to uproot them so I let them grow there. The end results are wild. They start out like a Cucumber. They start to get round at the top with the cucumber tail. They start to take on the yellow color. Yes a few of us did try one. The inside taste and has the tecture of a cucumber. The peel is not as bitter as the cucumber peel. The peel still has the cucumber feel with the tomato shape. I have some good pictures.
Posted by Martha Lambert  on  Fri Aug 27, 2010  at  11:47 PM
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=31130&id=100000088783140&l=b7971e3454

Check out my Cumatoes. I had no Idea this web page exsist until someone told me about this. I named it a Cumatoe or what would someone name a cross between a cucumber and a tomato? I did not intend for this to happen. I sat my 2 cumber plants down on the container I grow my tomatoes in. When I went back to plant them, they had rooted in the soil. I did not want to uproot them so I left them to grow. This is now what I have. I did get two regular tomatoes of the vine, and the rest are whatever. They do not taste bad. maybe better. not as bitter as cucumber.
Posted by Martha Lambert  on  Fri Aug 27, 2010  at  11:59 PM
I believe it. Only because the same thing happened to me. Our cucumber plants wrapped around our heirloom tomatoes and now we have round cucumbers on the vine.
Posted by Samantha  on  Fri Jul 22, 2011  at  12:30 PM
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