Year of the Tomato

Posted by Hilda M. Morrill

March 1, 2011

As promised, this month we are featuring the other half of the National Garden Bureau's "Year of..." program selection.

The tomato's wild relatives originated in South America, most likely in the Andes Mountains, but the fruit was not cultivated by the Andean people. Instead, it traveled over 2,000 miles north of its center of origin to Central America where the pre-Mayan people grew and domesticated the plants, naming them xitomatl.

The cherry-sized fruits of Solanum lycopersicum var. cerasiforme can still be found growing wild in the coastal mountains of Peru, Ecuador, and northern Chile. Hernán Cortés and his explorers are credited with finding the tomato in an Aztec market around 1520 and transporting the seed to Spain. From there, the tomato traveled throughout Europe and across the channel to England.

The earliest written records of the tomato are in herbal books. Botanists placed it in the nightshade family, which includes many poisonous plants. "This plant is more pleasant to the sight than either to the taste or smell because the fruit being eaten provoketh loathing and vomiting," wrote an English country doctor in 1600. Needless to say, tomatoes were not a popular food in England at that time. Gardeners grew them for curiosity, and, according to the botanist for King Charles I, "for the amorous aspect or beauty of the fruit."

Colonialists brought many plants from Europe to the New World, and the tomato was one of them. Thomas Jefferson raised them as ornamental plants at Monticello in 1781, but it wasn't until the1800s that people in North America began to relish tomatoes as food.

Legend has it that Colonel Robert Gibbon Johnson staged an event in 1820 that changed public opinion. In Salem, New Jersey, so the story goes, the Colonel set out to eat a basketful of tomatoes at the local courthouse in front of an audience that had gathered to watch the writhing spectacle of his death. He survived, of course, and the tomato was embraced. Over the years this account has been embellished and enshrined, but never verified. It is, however, a proven fact that cookbooks of the time contained recipes for tomato ketchup, relishes, and soups.

In 1880, James Vick's Flower and Vegetable Catalog of Rochester, New York listed six types of tomato seeds. In that same decade Alexander Livingston of Livingston Seed Co. introduced 'Golden Queen', described in W. Atlee Burpee's 1888 Farm Annual catalog as "handsome yellow slices making a beautiful contrast in dish with the red tomatoes."

Burpee listed twenty-one other tomato varieties for sale that year as well. A select few tomatoes from that era, including 'Acme', 'Paragon', and the revered 'Brandywine', can still be grown today. These and thousands of other tomatoes are known as heirloom tomatoes, loosely defined as varieties that have been in circulation for more than 50 years.

Open pollinated tomatoes, which include heirlooms and all other varieties that grow true from seed, remain popular with home gardeners. Saving and sharing seed of the many unique tomato varieties is a labor of love for many gardeners who, along with organizations such as Seed Savers Exchange, help to maintain the genetic diversity of the species.

The modern age of the tomato was ushered in by Dr. Oved Shifriss, who bred 'Big Boy', one of the first F1 hybrids. Offered by W. Atlee Burpee in 1949, this meaty 1 lb. tomato is still sold today. The early ripening red tomato was an instant success for Burpee. Thousands of hybrids succeeded it, offering gardeners desirable traits such as earliness, crack-resistance, and compact habits.

Continued breeding efforts have produced more healthful tomatoes with increased lycopene, and plants with multiple disease resistances. Modern tomatoes tolerate diseases caused by Fusarium and Verticillium fungi, nematodes, and viruses, and breeders expect that blight-tolerant hybrids will be available in the near future. These tolerances make it easier for gardeners and farmers to grow tomatoes without using pesticides.

The botanical name for tomato has changed several times. For many years its name was Lycopersicon or literally, wolf peach. When the tomato was placed in the nightshade (Solanaceae) family, the botanical name changed to Solanum lycopersicum.

(We thank the National Garden Bureau and credit them as our source of information. For more information about the tomato, visit www.ngb.org)