The tomato (Solanum lycopersicum, syn. Lycopersicon lycopersicum) is a herbaceous, usually sprawling plant in the Solanaceae or nightshade family, as are its close cousins tobacco, chili peppers, potato, and eggplant. It is a perennial, often grown outdoors in temperate climates as an annual, typically reaching to 1-3m (3 to 10 ft) in height, with a weak, woody stem that often vines over other plants.

The leaves are 10–25 cm long, odd pinnate, with 5–9 leaflets on petioles, each leaflet up to 8cm long, with a serrated margin; both the stem and leaves are densely glandular-hairy. The flowers are 1–2cm across, yellow, with five pointed lobes on the corolla; they are borne in a cyme of 3–12 together.

The tomato is native to Central, South, and southern North America from Mexico to Argentina. There is evidence that the first domesticated tomato was a little yellow fruit, ancestor of L. cerasiforme, grown by the Aztecs in Mexico, who called it xitomatl (pronounced shi-to-ma-tlh), meaning "plump thing with a navel". The word tomato comes from a word in the Nahuatl language, tomatl. The specific name, lycopersicum, means "wolf-peach" (compare the related species Solanum lycocarpum, whose scientific name means "wolf-fruit", common name "wolf-apple"), as they are a major food of wild canids in South America.

Early history

There is a competing hypothesis that the plant, like the word "tomato", originated in Mexico, where one of the two apparently oldest "wild" types grows. It is entirely possible that domestication arose in both regions independently. Diversity data suggests the center of diversity for wild tomatoes is located in Peru, while that of cultivated tomatoes, in Mexico.Fact: date=May 2008 Thus, it can be hypothesized that wild tomatoes were introduced from Peru to Mexico, where they were domesticated.

In any case, by some means the tomato migrated to Central America. Mayans and other peoples in the region used the fruit in their cooking, and it was being cultivated in southern Mexico and probably other areas by the 16th Century. It is thought that the Pueblo people 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 this variant is the direct ancestor of some modern cultivated tomatoes.

Two modern tomato cultivar groups, one represented by the Matt's Wild Cherry tomato, the other by currant tomatoes, originate by recent domestication of the wild tomato plants apparently native to eastern Mexico.

Spanish distribution

After the Spanish colonization of the Americas, the Spanish distributed the tomato throughout their colonies in the Caribbean. They also took it to the Philippines, whence it moved to southeast Asia and then the entire Asian continent. The Spanish also brought the tomato to Europe. It grew easily in Mediterranean climates, and cultivation began in the 1540s. It was probably eaten shortly after it was introduced, though it was certainly being used as food by the early 1600s in Spain. The earliest discovered cookbook with tomato recipes was published in Naples in 1692, though the author had apparently obtained these recipes from Spanish sources. However, in certain areas of Italy, such as Florence, the fruit was used solely as tabletop decoration before it was ever incorporated into the local cuisine until the late 17th or early 18th century.