THE GOLDEN APPLE

These very tiny tomatoes are growing in a pot outside the front door. They are as near to the original wild tomato as you're likely to get. I can't think of anything their size for comparison. They are bigger than a blueberry, certainly, but only half the size of a cherry tomato. The plant is a crawler and doesn't want to be in the pot. I had to prop it up to get a decent shot between rain showers.

If you don't want to know any more about tomatoes, stop right here.

The tomato was brought to Europe from Peru in the 1500s. It was known by the Aztecs as nahuatl or tomatl. The Italians went bonkers over it and called it pomo d'oro (apple of gold) and it is still pomodoro today. The French, using hope over experience, decided it was an aphrodisiac and called it pomme d'amour (apple of love) but when it didn't work they turned it into a sauce. The ever hopeful English called it a love apple.

Is a tomato a fruit, a vegetable or a berry? It's in the vegetable family, Solanaceae, the same as potatoes. It has an ovary containing seeds, which makes it a fruit. It is also a fleshy fruit with a lot of little seeds and no stone, which makes it a berry. It's all three.

It was the U. S. Supreme Court that made it a vegetable, officially. That's a long story, which you don't want to know, but it had to do with import taxes. Americans thought tomatoes were poisonous so they weren't popular until, in 1829, a chap sat outside a courthouse, local press alerted, and ate a whole basket of them in public. The crowd waited for him to keel over dead but when he didn't even barf, the news spread and the tomato was soon on its way into soup kettles.

Hybridisation produces high-yield, simultaneously maturing, thick skinned tomatoes which travel well and have eye appeal. This also produces plants that are subject to wilt, fungi, insects and blights, all of which require chemical treatment.

The tomatoes we buy in shops are picked when "mature green." This is a magic moment when the tomato will go on and ripen by itself. In most cases they are subjected to a synthetic ethylene gas while in transit to the markets. This is an organic substance the tomatoes would produce themselves if allowed to do so. From green to red in a matter of hours.

So now you know why shop tomatoes are never very good. TheY contain far fewer vitamins than vine ripened ones but they are, I suppose, better than none at all. I cannot imagine cooking without them, particularly Italian food.

Anybody with a doorstep, a balcony or a few feet of space could grow cherry tomatoes in a big pot. The pleasure of popping a ripe one between the choppers and tasting the explosion of tomato sweetness is exquisite.

This is the fifth straight day of home-based pics. Do they make umbrellas for cameras?