Helen Mirren says tomatoes are bisexual and need fingering

While promoting her new Netflix film, Dame Helen Mirren has shared that tomatoes are bisexual and you should finger them to help them grow.

I always liked tomatoes, and now I know why.

An interview about the new Netflix series The Thursday Murder Club turned very, well, fruity on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.

Sitting alongside co-star Pierce Brosnan, host Fallon started talking about gardening.

An enthusiastic gardener, Dame Helen Merrin started sharing her love of tomatoes.

And as they do on a late-night TV show, Fallon offered to make the pair salsa.

That’s when the true comedy began, and Mirren, discussing her love of tomatoes, shared that tomatoes are bisexual, well, the flower anyway.

“Incidentally, I just want to give you a tip about growing tomatoes,” Merrin said.

“You know the little flower?”

“Well, a good way to get a tomato out of a flower is you have to tremble the flower like this,” she said, wiggling her finger.

With the gesture having a sexual connotation, Fallon started to giggle and said, “Stop doing that. What’s going on?”

“A tomato is a bisexual thing, you see,” Mirren added as the audience laughed.

“You have to go around to each tomato, each flower and go like this,” once again, fingering the air.

It was hilarious, uncomfortable and just the right amount of camp for a late-night salsa-making lesson while promoting a murder series.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by The Tonight Show (@fallontonight)

Are tomoates bisexual?

Dame Helen Mirren certainly has a greener thumb than I.

But who would have thought my morning would be about hitting the internet to see if she was right.

Are tomatoes actually bisexual?

The short answer is no.

I will never look at a tomato the same way again, because it turns out tomatoes have male and female reproductive parts.

So, if we were to use the spectrum of LGBTQIA+ identification to describe them, we would say they are intersex.

Bisexuality is a sexual orientation characterised by attraction to more than one gender.

And while I don’t want to assume what any tomato gets up to on the vine, reproductive parts aren’t the point.

Intersex is a term for people born with physical sex characteristics that don’t fit typical binary notions of male or female bodies.

Their variations can involve chromosomes, hormones, reproductive organs, or genitals.

Intersex is not a gender identity or sexuality and refers to biological variations.

So, how true is the fingering of the flower?

Dame Helen Mirren was spot on.

Sure, having both male and female reproductive parts means that a tomato can pollinate itself.

But as we all know, a helping hand never hurts.

Pollination is essential for the formation of ripe, juicy tomatoes.

And without another plant nearby to help with the process, a physical trigger does the job nicely.

While commercial growers often use vibrator wires to stimulate the plants (you read correctly), a physical trigger does the job perfectly (as in life).

So how does it work? I enlisted the help of gardeningknowhow.com to be sure.

Gently shake or tap the plant or flower cluster to mimic wind.
Use a vibrating tool, like an electric toothbrush (you read right) or your finger, to stimulate pollen release by placing it just behind the open flowers.
Brush pollen by hand with a cotton swab or small paintbrush, transferring it from the anthers to the stigma.
Set up a small fan nearby to encourage airflow and dislodge pollen naturally.

Turns out, tomatoes get more action than me.

I will never look at a truss, Roma or Mr Stripey the same way again.

And god bless Helen Mirren for continuing to entertain and educate us all.

Not only with her new Netflix film, but in life hacks, too.

The Thursday Murder Club will be available on Netflix in Australia from 28th August.