Each year, the National Garden Bureau selects a flower and a vegetable to promote, and in 1998 the veggie spotlight will shine on the tomato.
Tomatoes are native to the Americas, in the Andean mountain region of South America.
The Aztecs of Central America are thought to be the first people to cultivate, eat and name the plant tomatl or xtomatl. The tomato was brought to North America by colonists as an ornamental plant, and it was not until the 1830s that tomatoes were accepted as food. For hundreds of years, it was thought by Europeans to be poisonous, since botanists had placed it in the nightshade family. The first F1 hybrid tomato, 'Big Boy,' was introduced by the Burpee Seed Company in 1949. Since then, thousands of hybrid tomatoes have been introduced by plant breeders.