PlantID: Tomatillo, or weed?

July 19, 2015 10:30 AM

This plant has sprung up as a volunteer in my friend's garden box. No tomatillos have been anywhere near the garden box, or the compost used to enrich the garden box. My husband claims it is definitely a tomatillo, because it looks remarkably like our tomatillo plant. I say it can't be, because that makes no sense, and it has to be some kind of weedy nightshade. Settle our bet, Metafilter.
posted by deludingmyself to Home & Garden (6 answers total)

Best answer: Looks very much like a tomatillo to me as well. Could be a groundcherry, if you've ever grown (or composted) these in the past. My vote would be to let it grow and see what the fruit looks like. Tomatillos plants do look a lot more like some of the wild nightshades, at least to my eye, but the husked fruit is pretty unmistakable.
posted by pullayup at 10:38 AM on July 19, 2015

Best answer: Definitely tomatillo - they are enthusiastic volunteers so I wouldn't be sidetracked by the fact that your friend can't explain where it came from.
posted by scrute at 11:03 AM on July 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

Best answer: You're going to have to pay up, I'm afraid.

A bird or a squirrel (or a raccoon or an opossum) could have thoughtfully transported the tomatillo to your garden bed.
posted by mudpuppie at 11:08 AM on July 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Yeah, we had a tomatillo show up out of nowhere (North SF Bay area, Northern California), no neighbors will fess up to growing them, and now they're like weeds. Pretty awesome weeds, it's actually cool to get a ripe purple tomatillo, totally different flavor than the sour ones from the grocery store, but those things spread like you wouldn't believe.

Now if we could just ID the peanut plants that keep showing up in our yard before we weed them and discover what they are from the roots...
posted by straw at 11:10 AM on July 19, 2015

Best answer: Tomatillo, probably planted by a critter.
posted by oneirodynia at 3:58 PM on July 19, 2015

Response by poster: I have yet to actually eat one of the tomatillos from this plant, but to my chagrin, it started bearing fruit before the intentionally-planted tomatillo in my own garden.

Thanks, Metafilter.
posted by deludingmyself at 8:10 PM on August 29, 2015 [1 favorite]