Tomatoes - Simon Hart

The original wild tomatoes come from South America, and can still be found in Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile and Colombia. Rather oddly there is no word for the plant in early South American Indian languages, and certainly no record of its cultivation, so it seems unlikely that any of the early local inhabitants found a use for it. Of the thirteen wild species considered as ‘tomatoes’, no single one of these is recognized as being the direct ancestor of the modern cultivated tomato, though genetically the closest relative is the tiny fruited Lycopersicon pimpinellifolium, or redcurrant tomato.