'Simpsons'-Inspired Tomacco Grows in Oregon

[Khephra]

LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - To the best of our knowledge, no confectioner has yet tried to market Nuts and Gum, as seen in a 1994 episode of "The Simpsons."

Someone has, however, successfully crossed a tomato plant and a tobacco plant. It's true: Tomacco isn't just for Homer anymore.

Rob Baur, an operations analyst for a wastewater-treatment plant who lives in Lake Oswego, Ore., says he grafted a tomato plant onto tobacco roots to produce the tomacco plant. In the 1999 episode of "The Simpsons" on which his experiment was based, Homer, fleeing a duel with a Southern gentleman, creates the foul-tasting but addictive plant by irradiating a field with plutonium.


Baur says he got his tomacco plant to bear fruit, but he thinks it probably contained a lethal amount of nicotine, so he didn't taste it.

more................

http://tv.zap2it.com/tveditorial/tve_main/1,1002,271|84554|1|,00.html

[JohnKleeb]

1. That episode was NOT in 1994 if it was then I am growing old

But I need some tomacco I guess. :shrug:

[Ediacara]

3. "Nuts and Gum" was from '94

Tomacco was was from '99

[JohnKleeb]

5. Time flies by then

I am growing old :(

[Zorba607]

2. 1999

[short bus president]

4. Hey! I scooped Kef!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=105&topic_id=359595

[Khephra]

7. Damn! Congrats!

:hi:

[short bus president]

8. First time for everything, right?

And most likely the last. It looks like nobody's too interested in the reality of tomacco. Their loss. Personally, I'm holding out for the grafting together of tomato and poppy to make "tosmacko" - now THAT should keep 'em coming back for more...

;-)

[Ediacara]

6. Hmmm....

They're both members of the same family of Plants (the Solanaceae), but I 1) don't believe the story and 2) doubt it'd be poisonous if it were true.

It's like grafting a human upper body onto orang-utan legs and expecting the human to 1) survive and 2) grow fat cheeks.

[7th_Sephiroth]

9. well down at DrugCo

we have put the upper half of an Orangutang on the lower half of a hippopotomous, we call it the monkopotomous, and just so you know combining the throwing strength of an orangutang and the digestive tract of a hoppo ISINT a good thing

[Interrobang]

10. To put your astute point into layman's terms...

Tomatoes, potatoes, and tobacco are all related to deadly nightshade. (Fries and ketchup and a couple cigarettes might kill someone with a nightshade allergy.) That's why I don't find it terribly amazing that they'd've spliced genes from the one into the other; it's kind of like cousins having kids...

[Ediacara]

11. but that's just it

it isn't gene splicing, it's grafting. Grafting does work for some plants (cactuses are a great example) but the grafted plants don't necisarilly take an attributes of the graftee.