The tomato is native to Southern and Central America. In 1519,
Cortez discovered tomatoes growing in Montezuma’s gardens and
brought seeds back to Europe where they were planted as
ornamental curiosities, but not eaten. Most likely the first
variety to reach Europe was yellow in color. In Spain and Italy
they were known as pomi d’oro, meaning yellow apples. Italy was
the first to embrace and cultivate the tomato outside South
America. The French referred to the tomato as pommes d’amour, or
love apples, as they thought them to have stimulating
aphrodisiacal properties. French botanist Tournefort provided
the Latin botanical name, Lycopersicon esculentum, to the
tomato. It translates to “wolfpeach”. Peach because it was round
and luscious and wolf because it was erroneously considered
poisonous. The botanist mistakenly took the tomato for the
wolfpeach referred to by third century writings as a poison in a
palatable package which was used to destroy wolves. Moreover,
rich people in that time used flatware made