| The tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) is a plant in the Solanaceae or nightshade family, native to Central and South America, from Mexico to Peru. It is a short-lived perennial plant, grown as an annual plant, typically growing to 1-3 m tall, with a weakly woody stem that usually scrambles over other plants. The leaves are 10-25 cm long, pinnate, with 5-9 leaflets, each leaflet up to 8 cm long, with a serrated margin; both the stem and leaves are densely glandular-hairy. The flowers are 1-2 cm across, yellow, with five pointed lobes on the corolla; they are borne in a cyme of 3-12 together. The fruit is an edible, brightly coloured (usually red, from the pigment lycopene) berry, 1-2 cm diameter in wild plants, commonly much larger in cultivated forms. History and distribution
Early history
According to Andrew F. Smith's The Tomato in America, the tomato probably originated in the highlands on the west coast of South America. Smith notes that there is no evidence that the tomato was cultivated or even eaten before the Spanish arrived. Other researchers, however, have pointed out that this is not conclusive, as many other fruits in continuous cultivation in Peru are not present in the very limited historical record. Much horticultural knowledge was lost after the arrival of Europeans, as the Roman Catholic Church had a policy of burning pre-Columbian information as pagan. In any case, by some means the tomato migrated to Central America. Maya and other peoples in the region used the fruit in their cooking, and it was being cultivated in southern Mexico, and probably in other areas, by the sixteenth century. It is thought that the Pueblo believed that those who witnessed the ingestion of tomato seeds were blessed with powers of divination. The large, lumpy tomato, a mutation from a smoother, smaller fruit, originated and was encouraged in Central America. Smith states that this variant is the direct ancestor of some modern cultivated tomatoes. |
