THE DELECTABLE TOMATO

Taranaki Daily News, 7 January 1927, Page 8

THE DELECTABLE TOMATO

FRUIT OR VEGETABLE! Things are not always what they seem. The Appeal Court of England on one historic occasion sat for a couple of weeks to decide whether a duck was an animal or a bird, a question that a layman would have settled without the slightest difficulty. lint even the layman may have reason to be puzzled in connection with the delectable tomato, which is so prominent in Auckland. Is it a fruit or a vegetable?

Tho same momentous question has cropped up in England, where it has apparently been omitted from the “list of exempted fruits” in the Shops Early Closing Act. Nor did a court case sufficiently clear the matter up. One of tho contestants retired complacently out of range after a declaration that fruit grew on bushes and trees, and tomatoes did not, but it was met with argument that the tomato was both a fruit and a vegetable, this only serving to complicate matters. Eventually the dictum of a learned authority on botany was sought, and his opinion was: “A fruit is the ripened ovary of a flowering plant with its contents, and whatever parts arc consolidated or intimately connected with it.” Thus ho held that the tomato was a fruit, but he apparently clouded the issue somewhat by including cucumbers in tho same category. The one and only Webster—he of dictionary fame—does not throw a flood of light oil the perplexing problem, but states succiently that the tomato is the fruit of a plant of the nightshade family; likewise that is has refreshing, appetising, and corrective qualities. The tomato, by the ■way, carries the imposing official name of lycopersicum esculentum, and is known in some countries as the love apple. First cousins, or even more closely related, are the egg plant and the tree tomato, both obviously fruits and not vegetables. One can easily imagine the difficulties that might arise were shopkeepers with exemption from the ordinary closing hours allowed to retail fruit but not vegetables, also the possibility of the Appeal Court or even tho Privy Council being asked to say once and for all under which legal heading the tomato, or even the cucumber, might be included. Fortunately in New Zealand the legal status of tho delectable tomato does not occasion trouble, as fruit and vegetables alike come under the heading of perishable stock and can be sold aide by side for consumption on the premises, provided that the shop-keeper has the necessary exemption -to be open for trade during hours when the average business place is closed. Some time ago much time was taken up in a New Zealand court in connection with a pound of apples, bought in a shop on a Sunday, but eaten on the roadway outside, and the point at issue—consumption outside of the premises—resulted in a vast amount of legal argument. Possibly had the purchase been a pound of tomatoes the subject of identity would have been probed to the utmost and quite a different aspect would have been touched upon.