Tomato
Tomato
Food Plant
A warmth-loving fruit crop — botanically a berry — whose flowers need a bumblebee's buzz to shake their pollen free.
💡 Fun Facts
- A tomato is really a fruit — a berry — even though we treat it as a vegetable.
- Its flowers need a special trick called buzz-pollination: a bumblebee grips the flower and vibrates to shake the pollen loose.
- Only the ripe fruit is safe to eat; the leaves and stems smell strong and are mildly poisonous.
📅 Through the Year
- Flowering:June to August
- Fruiting:July to October
Name Story
Solanum lycopersicum
means “the wolf-peach”
likely meaningScholars aren’t sure what the first part of the name, Solanum, originally meant.
What does its name mean?
- Solanum — an old name for this family of plants (meaning uncertain)Latin solanum — an ancient plant name whose root scholars aren’t sure of
- lycopersicum — wolf-peachGreek lykos ‘wolf’ + persikon ‘peach’
‘Wolf-peach’ — a wild, almost dangerous-sounding name for a fruit people once eyed with suspicion. The ripe fruit is perfectly safe and delicious; it’s only the leaves and stems that aren’t for eating.