Is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable?

Answer 1

Botanically speaking, the tomato you eat is a fruit. So is a watermelon, green pepper, eggplant, cucumber, and squash. A "fruit" is any fleshy material covering a seed or seeds.


Horticulturally speaking, the tomato is a vegetable plant. The plant is an annual and nonwoody. Most fruits, from a horticulture perspective, are grown on a woody plant (apples, cherries, raspberries, oranges) with the exception of strawberries.

In 1893, the United States Supreme Court ruled the tomato was a "vegetable" and therefore subject to import taxes. The suit was brought by a consortium of growers who wanted it declared a vegetable to protect U.S. crop development and prices. Fruits, at that time, were not subjected to import taxes and foreign countries could flood the market with lower priced produce. (A hundred years really hasn't changed anything.)

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Answer 2

A tomato is a fruit because like an apple for example, the seeds are on the inside. Many people think of it as a vegetable because it is not as sweet as many other fruits.

Interestingly, a banana is a herb not a fruit or vegetable.

Answer 3

Fruit

Answer 4

A fruit used as a vegetable.

Answer 5

The tomato (Solanum lycopersicum, formerly Lycopersicon lycopersicum) is a plant in the Solanaceae or nightshade family, native to Central and South America, from Mexico to Peru. It is a short-lived perennial plant, grown as an annual plant, typically growing to 1-3 m in height, with a weakly woody stem that usually scrambles over other plants. It is a close relative of the potato.

The leaves are 10-25 cm long, pinnate, with 5-9 leaflets, each leaflet up to 8 cm long, with a serrated margin; both the stem and leaves are densely glandular-hairy. The flowers are 1-2 cm across, yellow, with five pointed lobes on the corolla; they are borne in a cyme of 3-12 together. The fruit is an edible, brightly coloured (usually red, from the pigment lycopene) berry, 1-2 cm diameter in wild plants, commonly much larger in cultivated forms.

Answer 6

Vegetable

Answer 7

Tomato is a fruit. I am a student of Botany and we were taught it is a simple, true fruit(i.e. it grows from the ovary of the plant's flower),succulent(meaning fleshy) and falls in the same category(called Berry, though it may sound weird) as Banana, Guava, and Eggplant/ Brinjal (yeah that's a fruit too). I'm aiming for medicine, so you can be assured it's correct. Hope this helps! :-)

Answer 8

It depends on how you use it. Tomato is a fruit, if you eat raw. Tomato is a vegetable if you cook it ..

Answer 9

I think it is a fruit.
U include in both.... a fruit or a vegetable.

Answer 10

Fruit.

The tomato (Solanum lycopersicum, formerly Lycopersicon lycopersicum) is a plant in the Solanaceae or nightshade family, native to Central and South America, from Mexico to Peru.

The fruit is an edible, brightly coloured (usually red, from the pigment lycopene) berry, 1-2 cm diameter in wild plants, commonly much larger in cultivated forms.