Rime of the ancient tomato
Tomatoes have survived times of upheaval. Sort of. Depends on your point of view. Chaos is such a malleable concept. Take present-day Los Angeles, for example. Folks who live there might hear discontent in the wind but not chaos, except soldiers showed up and it was not the Continental militia chasing away troops loyal to British royalty but armed soldiers standing in line twiddling their thumbs at the behest of faux royalty-dreaming malcontents 3000 miles away trying to create chaos.
Meanwhile, early producing tomato varieties in Los Angeles are ready for harvest because attentive gardeners there can transplant seedlings as early as March, even earlier with protection. As expected, somebody counted, the report is in, and there are at least 10,000 tomato varieties on Earth, which doesn’t account for the volunteers that pop up in my garden each year, not to mention the ones in Los Angeles.
Solanum pimpinellifolium is a wild tomato relative native to Peru and Ecuador from which folks just like us 7000 years ago domesticated ancestors of modern tomatoes using magic on a Wednesday morning. A shame it is we so seldom use the word pimpinellifolium.
Tomato evolution continued swimmingly in the Americas until the 1500s when Spanish marauders showed up all over the place– Florida, Mexico City, the Andes – and quick-as-a-cricket tomatoes and squashes sailed the ocean blue back to Europe. Gardeners in Spain and Italy were especially fond of the new imports, and, soon enough, on one of their boat rides, tomatoes went to Turkey and China. Tomatoes are world travelers.
China by far grows the most tomatoes. As expected, somebody counted, the report is in, and its total for 2022 was 68.2 million tons. Arithmetic wants to convince us that China produced 96.6 pounds of tomatoes per citizen. Good work, Chinese gardeners (and government-controlled farming operations)! After China on the list are India and Turkey. The United States is fourth just above Egypt. My garden might be in the top 1,200,000. Not sure. Depends on weather.
The early Spanish invaders reported on the surprising variety of shapes, sizes and colors of tomatoes in Aztec gardens. A 2025 seed catalog originating in southern Missouri offers 117 different tomato varieties. Represented are varieties almost white to almost black, tomatoes with nipples, tomatoes shaped like pears or hearts or tiny peppers, scalloped tomatoes, variegated and speckled, orange outside but green inside, psychedelic-influenced or plain old red.
I knew someone who liked any tomato as long as it was medium-sized, round and red. “I pity the poor innocent who never tasted Orange Jubilee,” is how the song goes. To be sure, nothing wrong with tasty red tomatoes! Yippee! Nothing wrong with tasty Aunt Ruby’s German Green or Cherokee Purple, (which has a red base for its purple). Tomatoes are artistic and they won’t be pigeon-holed.
How did tomatoes get way? Remember pimpinellifolium? Had to be folks just like us who perpetually chose particular fruit on the vine and saved seeds and replanted for years. If a young couple, early twenties, started a garden and perpetuated a particular tomato variety in their garden space into their 70s, they will be passing on the same thing as a bonsai. All that careful attention and life invested. That’s spiritual.
Therefore, heirlooms. That’s my preference – heirloom varieties, which by definition means they are open-pollinated – not a hybrid– and have been grown for at least 50 years. Think about the attention, care, perseverance and dedication invested in 50 years of perpetuating a variety.
For a few paragraphs, we have thought out about tomatoes, gardeners and history but less about chaos. Certain tomato varieties will do well in a pot on a well-attended deck, and not a king in the world can stop them. Cherokee Purple is a team effort. All tomatoes matter.