Helen Mirren shares interesting fact about tomatoes

Helen Mirren shares interesting fact about tomatoes

"Tomatoes are bisexual". Helen Mirren just outed a tomato! 

Dame Helen Mirren wearing a pink long sleeved dress
Dame Helen Mirren/ YouTube (The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon)

Avid gardener Dame Helen Mirren has revealed an interesting fact about tomatoes that might surprise many.

It's even more scandalous than the revelation that tomatoes are fruit, not vegetables! 

Mirren and Pierce Brosnan stopped by 'The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon to promote their new Netflix movie, 'The Thursday Murder Club'. 

During the chat, Mirren, who previously revealed that gardening calms her anxiety, excitedly shared a tip about growing tomatoes. 

"You know the little flower? A good way to get a tomato out of a flower is you have to tremble the flower like this," she said while using her fingers to show how to gently shake the flower.

"Did you know that?" she asked. Fallon was not buying it. "I’m not doing that at all to my tomatoes," he joked.

ALSO READ: Study reveals potato's secret tomato heritage

Mirren insisted that the technique is legitimate. She then dropped a bombshell.

"A tomato is a bisexual thing, you see. Well, it is," she said when Fallon and Brosnan both laughed. 

"I looked it up very recently because I had a problem with my tomatoes. It's bisexual, so you have to go around to each tomato and go like this," Mirren demonstrated once again. 

Fallon quickly changed the topic, but not before Brosnan could ask a very important question about a tomato Fallon was about to cut. 

"Is that a male or female tomato?" he teased. Mirren clarified that it is the flower that is bisexual, not the actual tomato. 

According to The Seed Collection, tomato flowers are considered bisexual because "they contain both male and female reproductive parts."

They are basically self-pollinating. Because tomato flowers have a stamen (male) and a pistil (female), they don't need another plant to assist with fertilisation.

And there you have it, tomatoes are fruit and bisexual. 

We will never look at a tomato the same again! 

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Main image credit: YouTube/ The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

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