Tomato Seeds

Tomato Seeds

The botanical name of the tomato is Lycopersicon lycopersicum, which translates from the Greek as 'wolf peach', a probable reference to its inferiority to the peach (Prunus persica). It comes originally from western South America, but it was first cultivated in Mexico and other parts of Central America.

It's likely the name 'tomato' derives from the Aztec 'xitomati', which means 'plump thing with a navel'. It reached Britain in the 1590s, but we are not really sure how it arrived or who brought it. It was mentioned in Gerard's Herbal, which was published in 1597. For centuries it was often believed to be poisonous, a belief which persisted in North America until the 1820s.