Fruits - plant varieties and innovations - Brief Article

Flower & Garden Magazine, Jan, 2000

THE DUAL IDENTITY OF TOMATOES

Is a tomato a vegetable or a fruit? The answer depends on whom you ask.

Cooks classify tomatoes and other garden produce by their culinary uses; by that criterion, a tomato is a vegetable. Indeed, tomatoes can be found sharing the pages of seed catalogs with onions, carrots, and corn.

But botanists see tomatoes from a more scientific vantage point. To a botanist, a tomato is a mature ovulary -- a structure that results from a flower and bears seeds. In other words, a tomato fits the botanical definition of a fruit.

Tomatoes are not alone in their dual designation. Eggplants, peppers, cucumbers and squashes are also considered by botanists to be fruits, while simultaneously fitting the cook's description of vegetables.

Muskmelon `Magnifisweet' weighs 5-6 pounds and is more luscious, juicer and sweeter than an extra ripe pear. A single serving, which is 1/4 of this melon, provides 100% vitamin A and 80% vitamin C. It matures in 85 days. Seminis Garden

`Mignonette Alpine' strawberries are an improved cultivar of the heirloom Reine de Valee which produce dainty little pointed red berries with an ambrosial woodland flavor. These petite strawberries may be used as border edging or in containers. Hardy to Zone 5. Renee's Gardens