FIG. 10—AN EARLY ILLUSTRATION OF THE TOMATO
(From Morrison's "Historia Universalis," 1680)
This has commonly been regarded by botanists as a degenerate form of our garden tomatoes, rather than as an original species, but I find that, like L. cerasiforme and L. pyriforme, it is quite fixed under cultivation, except as crossed with other species or with our garden varieties, and I believe it to be the original species from which our cultured sorts have been developed, by crossing and selection. Such crosses probably were made either naturally or by natives before the tomato was discovered by Europeans. The earliest prints we have of the tomato (Figs. 9 and 10) are far more like the fruit of this plant than that of L. cerasiforme, and the prints of many of the earliest garden varieties and of some sorts which are still cultivated in southern Europe, for use in soups, are like it not only in size and form, but in flavor. These facts make it seem far more probable that our cultivated sorts have come, by crossing, between this and other species rather than by simple development from L. cerasiforme.
Prof. E. S. Goff, of Wisconsin, who has made a most careful study of the tomato, expressed the same opinion, writing that it seemed to him that our cultivated sorts must have come from the crossing of a small, round, smooth, sutureless type, with a larger, deep-sutured, corrugated fruit, like that of the Mammoth Chihuahua, but smaller. However this may be, I think that it is wise to throw all of our cultivated garden sorts, except the Pear, the Cherry, and the Grape—which I regard as distinct species—together under the name of L. esculentum, even when we know they have originated by direct crosses with the other species; and it is well to classify the upright growing sorts under the varietal names, L. validum, and the larger, heavier sorts, as L. grandifolium, as has been done by Bailey. (Cyclopedia of Horticulture.)
CHAPTER II
History
The garden vegetable known in this country as tomato and generally as tomate in continental Europe, is also known as Wolf-peach and Love Apple in England and America, and Liebesapfel in Germany, Pomme d'Amour in France, Pomo d'oro in Italy, Pomidor in Poland.
Origin of name.—The name tomato is of South American origin, and is derived from the Aztec word xitomate, or zitotomate, which is given the fruit of both the Common tomato and that of the Husk or Strawberry tomato or Physalis. Both vegetables were highly prized and extensively cultivated by the natives long before the discovery of the country by Europeans, and there is little doubt that many of the plants first seen and described by Europeans as wild species were really garden varieties originated with the native Americans by the variation or crossing of the original wild species.