Despite the fact that popular usage renders it a vegetable for most practical purposes, the tomato is technically a fruit. The juicy berry grows from many varieties of Lycopersicon esculentum and L. pimpinelli folium, both of which are plants classified as members of the nightshade family. Similar to belladonna and many other types of nightshades, tomato plants are toxic, and few were brave enough to attempt to eat the fruit they bore when the plants was first introduced to Europe by the Spanish (who discovered them during explorations of South America), due to fear they were also poisonous. The Italians were among the first Europeans to recognize the fruit as food source, it soon becoming a staple of their diet. In the United States, the tomato was much slower to catch on, not becoming a widely eaten item in the country until the twentieth century.

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