by Becky Seward, Ecosystem Farm Manager Every plant we grow on the farm began somewhere in the evolutionary scheme of things as a wild plant, indigenous to some part of our planet, settling into its ecological niche. At some point humans came in, plucked out the plant and developed it into a tastier or hardier version of itself, in the process changing the chemistry of the plant for human consumption. The tomato, which has no direct native species (the primogenitor is the tom