tomato plant are New World plants . They were obscure to Europeans before Columbus get them back at the end of the fifteenth 100 . They had a variety of American Amerindic name and it is one of these Amerindic names that gives us the English word " tomato . " The German name for " wolf peach " gives us the scientific name " lycopersicum . "
Step 1
The tomato plant is unusual in that it has at least three scientific figure . Solanum lycopersicum is the most common , and it place the tomato ( aright ) in the nightshade syndicate ( Solanaceae ) , along with tobacco , the potato , the eggplant and deadly nightshade ( lethal nightshade ) . The plant life was given this name by Carl Linnaeus in 1753 , but the name was challenged within 20 years , and again more or less over a century afterwards . It was not until modern DNA - examination techniques were invent that Linnaeus ' original classification was verified to be right . Although this is the commonly agreed - upon name in most scientific publications , the later names are still used by some authorities and many seed catalogs .
Step 2
Lycopersicon esculentum
In 1768 , Philip Miller renamed the tomato industrial plant Lycopersicon esculentum . This might have been mostly a marketing stratagem – people were not comfortable with a food for thought in the mortal nightshade family . Although this name has long been known to be incorrect , it is still found in the publications of such venerable organisation as PubMed and Perdue University . Sometimes the correct name ( Solanum lycopersicum ) is list as a " synomym " and sometimes not . The Lycopersicon esculentum name is firmly make in the lit and even appears in several dictionary .
Lycopersicon lycopersicum
In 1881 , Gustav Karl Wilhelm Hermann Karsten introduced the name Lycopersicon lycopersicum . This name is no longer found in scientific references , but it is often visit the " scientific name " in seed companionship literature . If you do an Internet search for Lycopersicon genus Lycopersicum you will regain link to thousands of seed company . This confusion of scientific name is chew over in a confusion in democratic culture about tomatoes . For years there was a question about whether tomatoes were fruits or vegetables . In culinary terms they are a veg ( more often eaten in the main course than in the desert path ) , but in biological terms they are a yield because they have cum . In 1893 , the U.S. Supreme Court " settled " the matter by declaring the Lycopersicon esculentum a vegetable . Tennessee list it as the state vegetable , Alabama list it as the state yield , and Arkansas list it as both the commonwealth yield and the state vegetable .
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