Please don't smoke the tomatoes!

How ya doin New Yawk?  The NY Boys in Blue busted a rooftop marijuana growing operation except it turned out to be tomatoes.  Yes, tomatoes.  Which of course are grown for their berries not their smokable leaves.  This is a good thing because the smoking tomato leaves is way worse than smoking tobacco leaves, both nightshades, and similar enough that you can graft tomatoes onto tobacco root stock and grow some high nicotine tomatoes (not recommended for several reason taste being the primary one), however you will not get tomato hornworms on them.  Like most nightshades, the green foliage of tomatoes contain one or more of the tropane alkaloids, primarily hyoscyamine.  It's not good for you when ingested, and European so well knew this that the edibility of tomatoes was very much in question when newly introduced from the New World. The rooftop gardeners were turned in by the building super who said it was marijuana.  The police never checked it out (good police work, boys) and came busting in on the tomato patch.  As stupid as this sounds, these be city boys.  People so far removed from the production and source of their food that they probably thought tomatoes grew on trees.  TPP remembers a college friend from Brooklyn who recoiled in total revulsion once he actually saw, up close, first hand, where milk comes from.  He was also incredulous about the actual size of a cow.  "Tings like dis belong in zoos!"  If his remark is recalled accurately.  So from TPP's perspective, in their vegetative state, neither the super nor the cops could be expected to make an accurate ID of any plant foliage.  Wonder what they'd pay for doing some plant ID work for the NYC police? 

Hard habit to kick

As the Phactor sits here reading science news and getting bits and pieces together for today's classes, here's a not very surprising scientific finding, nicotine addiction is really old.  For how ever long humans have occupied Mesoamerica, there has been nicotine addiction.  Cultures really know their plant resources, until they become urbanized or even worse sub-urbanized, so almost as soon as people discovered the wonderful kick you got from chewing on the leaves or smoking the tobacco plant, it was an addiction.  How could it be any other way?  So do we expect humans to give up their stimulants any time soon?  Pass the coffee.