There is nothing more enjoyable to me than homegrown summer tomatoes. You plant them from seed or as transplants; nurture, water and fertilize them; and pick them when they are ripe; not like the supermarket tomatoes that are picked green and ripen as they are brought to market. And yet, through various times in history, tomatoes were thought of as poisonous.

Tomatoes are thought to have originated along the west coast of South America in Peru. There are eight species in the tomato genus that still grow wild in the Andes Mountains. The tomato then migrated to Central America. The Mayans in the region used the fruit in their cooking. It was later cultivated in southern Mexico by the sixteenth century.

The conquest of South America by the Spanish saw the distribution of the tomato throughout their colonies extending from the Caribbean to the Philippines. They also introduced the tomato to Europe. It was used as food in the early 1600s in Spain.

The Italians called the tomato fruit "pomi d'oro" or golden apple because the first introduced plant had a yellow fruit. In Italy, the plant was assumed to be poisonous because of its relationship to the deadly Nightshade Family. The peasant class discovered that the tomato fruit could be safely eaten when there was a shortage of food. The tomato did not gain wide acceptance until the 18^th century.

One of the earliest cultivators of the tomato plant in England was a barber-surgeon named John Gerard. He published Gerard's Herbal in 1597 writing that he believed the plant was poisonous. The tomato is an acid food which leached lead from the pewter cooking pans used in England at that time, causing the resulting food to be poisoned. His writing influenced the thought that the tomato was unfit for consumption for many years in Britain and its North American colonies.

The tomato was introduced to France from Italy during the late 18^th century. The cultivated variety of tomato introduced to France was red in color. It became a culinary symbol of the French Revolution.

The earliest reference to tomatoes in British North America is from 1710 by herbalist William Salmon. The plants were thought to be poisonous at this time and were grown more as ornamental plants than as food. Thomas Jefferson grew tomatoes in Virginia as early as 1782. Cultured people like Jefferson, who ate tomatoes in Paris and sent some seeds home, knew the tomato was edible, but many of the less well-educated did not.

There is a story that a British spy/chef committed suicide after "poisoning" George Washington's dinner he'd made. using tomatoes. There is an old farm journal story that in September 1820 or 1830, a Colonel Robert Gibbon Johnson introduced the tomato to Salem County, New Jersey. Despite warnings from his physician, Dr. James Van Meter, that the amount of oxalic acid in the tomatoes would kill him, Colonel Johnson ate an entire basket of tomatoes in front of thousands of spectators and survived.

So when you take the first bite out of your hard-earned, home-grown tomato this summer, remember the history behind your killer tomatoes.