Collection of Jaltomata darcyana (Solanaceae), previously unrecorded in cultivation, from a home garden in Chicago, IL.

Chicago (Ill.); Central America

Evidence has been slowly accumulating that the urban home gardens of immigrants or transnational migrants in the USA conserve food plant diversity with roots in the developing world. Published species lists for home gardens indicate that, at least at the species level, this diversity is not novel but consists of widely grown, culturally important plant species that are also available through the horticultural trade. In 2018, we returned to the home garden of a Mexican-origin household in Chicago and confirmed the identity of a plant provisionally identified as Jaltomata darcyana during an earlier inventory of the garden. A recently named species of Central America, J. darcyana has not been previously recorded in cultivation. Collection of this species from a Chicago garden suggests that urban gardens may harbor other novel species awaiting documentation by urban ecologists and botanists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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