ABSTRACT
The tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum) is a member of the Solanaceae family. This family contains a number of plants important as human food, including potatoes, eggplant, and bell peppers. The name Lycopersicon derives from the Greek for wolf peach. The plant received its name from Anguillara and Marinello in 1561 (1) who mistakenly thought this name had already been given to the plant by Galen (2). Since Claudius Galen was referring to a plant growing in northern Africa in the second century A.D., 1400 years before the tomato arrived in that half of the world, he could hardly have been referring to the tomato. Another mistake was made when the genus was mistakenly spelled Lycopersicum. The misspelling appears to have been started by Hill (3) in 1773 and continued until it was pointed out by Druce (4) in 1914. This misspelling can still be seen in several places in the literature today The first good description of the various tomato species, including the one commonly eaten today, was made by Miller in 1768 (5), hence texts frequently refer to the species as L. esculentum Mill (6).
