TOMATO / NEW WORLD HISTORY

TOMATOES

1. Tomatoes are native to South America.
2. Peru is the area of earliest know cultivation.
3. The word tomato is derived from the Aztec Nahutal language from the word Tomatl.
4. They are a fruit of a vine of the "Nightshade Family" of plants.
5. It was however slow to be accepted in America in the 1800's because the people thought it to be a poison since it was a relative of the "Nightshade Family" which includes names of toxic plants of the "Deadly Nightshade Family" like belladona and mandrake.
6. Thomas Jefferson in Monticello, Virginia was one of the frist recorded farmers to plant the tomato.
7. It was however quite popular on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, in Europe, and especially so in Italy. The Portuguese and Spanish are credited with introducing it but curiously used the tomato mostly as a vegetable when it is fact classified as a fruit.
8. Later on, the French, thinking it perhaps an aphrodisiac began to cultivate and called it " pommes d'amour" or "the love apple" .
9. Other popular 16th. century names were: The Peruvian Apple and The Apple of Peru.