Here's some fun tomato facts and trivia, so you can show off your tomato culture at parties!
- The largest tomato plant ever grown reached 19.8 m (65 ft) in length. It was was grown by Nutriculture Ltd of Mawdesley, Lancashire, UK. It was the year 2000 and it was of the "Sungold" cultivar
- In Buņol, Spain there's a yearly festival named "Tomatina", where partecipants throw tomatoes at each other. On August 30, 2007, around 40,000 Spaniards partecipated and threw approximately 115,000 kilograms (250,000 lb) of tomatoes. Most tourists were bare-chested and included Frenchmen, Germans, Italians and Britons
- The heaviest tomato ever cultivated weighed in at 3.51 kg (7 lb 12 oz). It was of the 'Delicious' variety, and was grown by Gordon Graham of Edmond, Oklahoma in 1986.
- In Lake Buena Vista, Florida, Walt Disney World Resort keeps an experimental greenhouse that holds the largest tomato plant in the world. According to the Guinness World Records, it yields a harvest of more than 32,000 tomatoes and weighs 1,151.84 pounds (522 kg). The plant was discovered in Beijing, China, by Yong Huang, Epcot's manager of agricultural science, who took its seeds and grew them in the experimental greenhouse. Today, the plant produces thousands of golfball-sized tomatoes that are served at Walt Disney World's restaurants, and can be seen by tourists riding the "Living With the Land" boat ride at Epcot.
- Tomatoes are usually referred to as vegetables, but they are actually a fruit!
- The botanical family of tomatoes is the same nightshade family as tobacco, potatoes, aubergine (eggplants), chilli peppers, and the poisonous belladonna.
- At first, tomatoes were used by our european ancestors as tabletops and ornamental plants, since they were widely believed to be poisonous (due to their belonging to the same family of the poisonous plant belladonna)
- While the fruit is perfectly safe and healthy to eat, the plant's leaves are actually toxic!
- Lycopene, the famous and powerful antioxidant contained in tomatoes and other red fruits, owes its name to the botanical name of tomato "Solanum lycopersicum"