What is the wolf's peach?
By Chelsie Vandaveer
November 25, 2002
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killerPlants Tendrils: ~~1~~2~~3~~4~~5~~
Suggested Reading – Plus Pear Tomatoes, & Granny Smith Tomato—>Click here.
Poma Amoris, the apple of love, was introduced to Europe in the mid 1500s. John Gerard grew red and yellow varieties by 1597. Gerard was suspect of the fruit for he stated, "In Spaine and those hot Regions they...eat the Apples prepared and boiled with pepper, salt, and oile: but they yield very little nourishment to the bodie, and the same nought and corrupt." (The Herbal, 1633 ed.)
The yellow variety, Pomum Aureum, confused Gerard. He associated the fruit with the Greek myth of golden apples. "Howbeit there be other golden Apples whereof the Poets doe fable, growing in the Gardens of the daughters of Hesperus, which a Dragon was appointed to keepe,
who, as they fable was killed by Hercules." It was generally accepted through the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance that the Ancients (Greeks and Romans) knew everything and only wrote the truth.
Plants were classified medicinally according to their temperature. Cold plants chilled the body, sufficiently cold plants brought on rigor mortis. The plant we call the tomato easily produces adventitious roots along the stem. The ability of the tomato to root itself was proof to Gerard that the plant was cold (toxic).
"The Golden Apple, with the whole herbe it selfe is cold...in my judgement it is very cold, yea perhaps in the highest degree of coldness: my reason is, because I have in the hottest time of Sommer cut away the superfluous branches...and cast them carelessly in the allies (paths) of my garden, the which (notwithstanding the extreme heat of the Sun, the hardness of the trodden allies, and at that time when no raine at all did fall) have grown as fresh as where I cast them...which argueth the great coldnesse contained therein....which I leave to every man's censure."
The tomato received the sinister name, Lycopersicum, wolf's peach, for the believed toxic qualities of the fruit. (The green parts do contain solanine, a toxic bitter alkaloid.) Philip Miller retained that dark bit of history when he named the tomato genus, Lycopersicon.
Dartmouth College Rippel Electron Microscope Facility has a spectacular scanning electron micrograph of the surface of a tomato leaf. To view the SEM, click on the link:
http://remf.dartmouth.edu/images/botanicalLeafSEM/source/15.html
killerPlants Tendrils: ~~1~~2~~3~~4~~5~~
Suggested Reading:
What is the tomatl? What's in a Name? - November 22, 2002
Kitchen Garden NGA Garden Shop - kp Bazaar
How were spiderworts used by the Aztec? Herbal Folklore - December 16, 2002
What was the willow wolf? What's in a Name? - May 30, 2003
What is wolf'sbane? Herbal Folklore - October 1, 2001
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