Meeting Abstract
An Australian bush tomato that has evaded classification for decades has been described as a new species from the Ord Victoria Plain biogeographic region in the monsoon tropics of the Northern Territory. While now recognized as an andromonoecious species, the taxon has been found exhibiting multiple reproductive phenotypes: with solitary perfect flowers, a few staminate flowers, or with cymes composed of a basal hermaphrodite and an extended rachis of several to many distal staminate flowers. Given this apparent ability to exhibit elements of three different plant breeding systems, we have chosen the name Solanum plastisexum. This name, for us, is not just a reflection of the diversity of sexual forms seen in this species. It is also a recognition that this plant is a model for the sort of sexual fluidity that is present across the plant kingdom – where just about any sort of reproductive form one can imagine (within the constraints of plant development) is present. In a way, S. plastisexum is not just a model for the diversity of sexual/reproductive form seen among plants – it is also evidence that attempts to recognize a “normative” sexual condition among the planet’s living creatures is problematic. When considering the scope of life on Earth, the notion of a constant sexual binary consisting of two distinct and disconnected forms is, fundamentally, a fallacy.
