What It Is

• If you have ever eaten a tomato, you have eaten a love apple in one of its many forms.
  
  

Legal Definition

• In 1893, the U.S. Supreme Court officially and legally designated tomatoes as vegetables. This was done because Congress had levied a 10 percent tax on imported vegetables.
  
  

Botanical definition

• In botanical terms, tomatoes are the unripened ovaries of plants, so they are considered the fruit of the tomato plant.
  
  

Fun Facts

• At one point, the Church of Rome banned tomatoes as being "the devil's fruit" and they were called "scandalous." It has debated that a tomato, rather than an apple, was the forbidden fruit of Eden.
  
  

Famous Ties

• Thomas Jefferson was one of the early growers of tomatoes in the United States, planting them annually beginning in 1809.