Voluntaire

I used to help my paternal grandmother work in my father's garden while I was growing up, especially in the summers.  It was a very large garden by modern standards and we used to produce a lot of food from it.  What we didn't eat she canned and the shelves in the basement would be lined with corn, beans, squash, tomato and other canned foods.  When a plant came up from seed that we did not plant ourselves she called it "voluntaire" and let it grow along with what was planted.  I remember in particular a voluntaire yellow squash and zucchini hybrid (it was a result of cross pollination the summer before) that grew next to some of our onions and its fruits made wonderful fried squash. 

Our landlord had a tree cut down next to our house and all kinds of plants have sprouted from the patch of ground where it used to be heavily shaded.  Including a tomato plant with tiny cherry tomatos and the first word I heard in my mind was "voluntaire" and I left it to grow.  It's funny, I haven't heard that word used in that way for decades, but it was still there in my mind. 

I suspect the tomato is spread by birds eating the small fruits.

This also beings to mind crows and corn.  We had problems with animals eating our seeds.  Moles would go down the row and eat beans we had planted.  Crows would pull up corn as it was sprouting and we would run outside and shoo them off (or shoot at them).  Once I remember a corn plant growing up voluntaire on a hillside far away from our garden.  My grandmother said it was where a crow had dropped it after we ran them away from our garden.