Tomato Plant

Tomato Plant

Tomato (tomato) - very tasty and healthy vegetables! There are thousands of varieties of tomatoes for the open field, greenhouse, and even to grow at home! Growing tomatoes - an exciting but challenging task. The tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum) is an American plant with an American name. In Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, tomatl indicates something round and plump, and this fruit (rather than vegetable) was almost certainly domesticated in Mexico, even though the presence of its numerous wild relatives (consisting of at least seven species) in South America suggests that it originated there. Apparently, however, tomatoes were not much used in the Andes region (Hall, 2011).

Meanwhile, to the north in Mexico, the tomatillo or “husk tomato” of the genus Physalis, which is also round and plump, was being cultivated, and as a consequence, there was already a cultivation tradition into which the newest round and plump fruit was fitted after its arrival. How the tomato made the voyage from South America to Mexico is not known with certainty, but it is probable that the seeds of wild tomatoes were carried by birds and that tomatoes began their career in Mexico as weeds in tomatillo fields. By the time Hernando Cortés reached Mexico in 1519, careful cultivation had brought forth a number of tomato varieties that were utilized for sauces, mixed with chillies, and eaten with beans along with numerous other dishes (Jones, 1999).

Before the sixteenth century was out, the tomato had been introduced in Europe, where its reception was far from enthusiastic. In part, this was because no one knew what it was or what to do with it, and nomenclature was such that no one could be certain that they were talking about the same plant. The sudden introduction of several American foods had left Europeans a bit confused about where all of these new items were coming from. As a rule, new foods had arrived from across the Mediterranean with the Moors. Thus, in a number of languages, the tomato became a pomi di mori (“apple of the Moors”) or some variation thereof. In addition, there arose corruptions, such as the French pomme d'amour (“love apple”) - although the tomato had no reputation as an aphrodisiac - and the Italian pomodoro (“golden apple”), which has wrongly been taken by some as an indication that the first tomatoes in Europe were of an orangish or yellowish variety. The Spanish, who continued to call the tomato a tomate, readily incorporated it into their diets and introduced it as well in their territories in Italy, where it was destined to make its largest impact (Jones, 2008).

However, tomatoes caught on more slowly elsewhere, probably in part because of the rank smell of the plant, in part because it was known to be a relative of “deadly nightshade,” and partly because the tomato was adapted to warm climates, and new varieties were needed for northern climates. Thus, in Great Britain and the United States (even though Thomas Jefferson had grown ...