It’ll Give You a Fright: Your Tomato Is a Mini Vegetable Garden

Have you ever experienced this: an orange with a seed already starting to sprout, a bell pepper with mini bell peppers growing inside, and a tomato that was already busy growing new tomatoes? It looks ridiculous, even a little gross, but it’s one hundred percent natural and officially called: vivipary.

When seeds or pits start to sprout too early while they’re still inside the fruit or vegetable, this is called vivipary. It’s a Latin word that literally means ‘live birth’. Not a word you particularly want to read when you’ve just sunk your teeth into that fruit, but it happens more often than you might think. It can occur especially with tomatoes and bell peppers, particularly if you’ve left them sitting in the fruit bowl for a while after buying them and the weather is warm.

Sprouting inside a mandarin

How does that happen? A specific substance in seeds and pits suppresses sprouting, to prevent them from starting to grow while conditions aren’t right—for example, while they’re still inside a mango or mandarin. If the wait takes too long, or those seeds get warm, that substance runs out and voilà: they start growing. It looks creepy, but it isn’t bad or unhealthy. So you could simply eat those tomatoes, bell peppers and whatever else is growing and blooming in your fruit bowl—but everyone can imagine that you may not feel much like doing so anymore. Or: think out of the box and plant those eager-to-grow seeds in a balcony planter or the backyard; at least you’ll end up with a fun plant from your food nightmare.

Also read:

• How to: keep herb plants alive
• True or false: there are male and female bell peppers
• Recipe: cod with chorizo, tomato and potato

Source: Bored Panda