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Lycopersicon lycopersicum
Lycopersicon esculentum The tomato (Solanum lycopersicum, syn. Lycopersicon lycopersicum) is an herbaceous, usually sprawling plant in the Solanaceae or nightshade family, as are its close cousins tobacco, chili peppers, and eggplant. It is a perennial, often grown outdoors in temperate climates as an annual, typically reaching to 1-3m (3 to 10 ft) in height, with a weak, woody stem that often vines over other plants. The leaves are 10–25 centimetres (3.9–9.8&_160;in) long, odd pinnate, with 5–9 leaflets on petioles,[1] each leaflet up to 8&_160;centimetres (3.1&_160;in) long, with a serrated margin; both the stem and leaves are densely glandular-hairy. The flowers are 1–2 centimetres (0.39–0.79&_160;in) across, yellow, with five pointed lobes on the corolla; they are borne in a cyme of 3–12 together. The tomato is native to Central, South, and southern North America from Mexico to Argentina. There is evidence that the first domesticated tomato was a little yellow fruit, ancestor of L. cerasiforme, grown by the Aztecs in Mexico, who called it xitomatl (pronounced shi-to-ma-tlh), meaning "plump thing with a navel". The word tomato comes from a word in the Nahuatl language, tomatl. The specific name, lycopersicum, means "wolf-peach" (compare the related species Solanum lycocarpum, whose scientific name means "wolf-fruit", common name "wolf-apple"), as they are a major food of wild canids in South America.
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