I pomi d'oro / di Gio. Francesco Angelita, Roco Accademico Disuguale ; doue si contengono due lettioni, de' fichi l'vna, e de' melloni l'altra ; nelle quali non solo si scorgono le lor lodi, e le loro eccellenze, ma si scoprono molti segreti per vsarli, e per cultiuarli ; e si notano molti errori di diuersi grand'huomini intorno al loro sentimento ; aggiuntavi vna lettione della lvmaca doue si pruoua, ch'ella sia maestra della vita human ...
Pomi D
The French used to call them pommes d'amour: apples of love. The Italians named them pomi d'oro: golden apples. Maybe they were thinking of the golden apples of the Hesperides, given by Gaia, the Earth mother, to Hera, queen of the gods, and grown in a garden at the edge of the sunset.
In 1544, Italian herbalist Pietro Andrae Matthioli made the first reference to the tomato's presence in Europe when he wrote about the "pomi d'oro," or apples of gold [source: Smith]. It's likely that the first tomatoes in Europe were yellow ones, hence the golden description. Matthioli went on to classify them as similar to the mandrake plant. As we mentioned on the first page, the mandrake plant was associated with many poisonous plants, such as nightshade, but it also renowned for its aphrodisiac qualities. In the book of Genesis, Rachel and Leah concocted a love potion out of mandrake roots; the Hebrew word for mandrake, "dudaim," can be translated as "love apples" or "love plants" [source: Smith]. Some foods prominently featuring spaghetti are associated with sex to this day; consider the 20th century creation of puttanesca sauce, which is translated as "whore's spaghetti" [source: Seed].
While it's possible that tomatoes are called love apples because of their aphrodisiacal qualities, there is one other theory to consider, which unfortunately is much less spicy than the first one. This theory has to do with how the tomato migrated through Europe. Spanish travelers brought tomatoes to Europe in the 16th century; as we mentioned, the Italians deemed them pomi d'oro. But at this time, there were Moors in Spain, and they took the tomato back to Morocco, where they called it pomi dei mori, or "apple of the Moors." When the French got hold of the tomato, they called it "pommes d'amour," or apples of love. Did they call it that because of its association with the mandrake plant, or was it simply a linguistic slip-up? It's possible that "pommes d'amour" was derived from its similarity to "pomi dei mori" or even "pomi d'oro" [source: Ray].
Background. Soon after the Spanish conquest of the Americas, the first tomatoes were presented as curiosities to the European elite and drew the attention of sixteenthcentury Italian naturalists. Despite of their scientific interest in this New World crop, most Renaissance botanists did not specify where these 'golden apples' or 'pomi d'oro' came from. The debate on the first European tomatoes and their origin is often hindered by erroneous dating, botanical misidentifications and inaccessible historical sources. The discovery of a tomato specimen in the sixteenth-century 'En Tibi herbarium' kept at Leiden, the Netherlands, triggered research on its geographical provenance and morphological comparison to other tomato specimens and illustrations from the same time period. Methods. Recent digitization efforts greatly facilitate research on historic botanical sources. Here we provide an overview of the ten remaining sixteenth-century tomato specimens, early descriptions and 13 illustrations. Several were never published before, revealing what these tomatoes looked like, who saw them, and where they came from. We compare our historical findings with recent molecular research on the chloroplast and nuclear DNA of the 'En Tibi' specimen. Results. Our survey shows that the earliest tomatoes in Europe came in a much wider variety of colors, shapes and sizes than previously thought, with both simple and fasciated flowers, round and segmented fruits. Pietro Andrea Matthioli gave the first description of a tomato in 1544, and the oldest specimens were collected by Ulisse Aldrovandi and Francesco Petrollini in c. 1551, possibly from plants grown in the Pisa botanical garden by their teacher Luca Ghini. The oldest tomato illustrations were made in Germany and Switzerland in the early 1550s, but the Flemish Rembert Dodoens published the first image in 1553. The names of early tomatoes in contemporary manuscripts suggest both a Mexican and a Peruvian origin. The 'En Tibi' specimen was collected by Petrollini around 1558 and thus is not the oldest extant tomato. Recent molecular research on the ancient nuclear and chloroplastDNAof the En Tibi specimen clearly shows that it was a fully domesticated tomato, and genetically close to three Mexican landraces and two Peruvian specimens that probably also had a Mesoamerican origin. Molecular research on the other sixteenth-century tomato specimens may reveal other patterns of genetic similarity, past selection processes, and geographic origin. Clues on the 'historic' taste and pest resistance of the sixteenth-century tomatoes will be difficult to predict from their degraded DNA, but should be rather sought in those landraces in Central and South America that are genetically close to them. The indigenous farmers growing these traditional varieties should be supported to conserve these heirloom varieties in-situ. 2ff7e9595c