The Tomato - A Little History and Some Growing Instructions Of all the vegetables grown in America, none is more universally beloved than the tomato, and yet, for many decades, this delightful fruit was shunned by Americans who considered it poisonous. The tomato is native to Mexico and western South America where it grows as a perennial. It has been a staple of the diet of these regions for thousands of years. Many of the wild varieties are small, intensely flavored and borne in clusters. Other types of wild and semi-wild tomatoes are larger, but deeply ribbed. The larger fruited varieties probably originated on the eastern slopes of the Andes where there is substantially more rainfall than on the arid western slopes. Both kinds of tomatoes were
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