SEED-VESSELS WE EAT 253 



olive, planted around the old Franciscan missions, 

 is the variety best known and best liked in Cali- 

 fornia. Wherever the climate is hot and the air 

 dry, olives grow on irrigated land. But a humid 

 climate will not do. So the olive is not a fruit of 

 the Tropics. 



TOMATOES 



Your grandmother has told you that in her 

 childhood people grew for mere curiosity a plant 

 that bore red fruits called "love apples." They 

 brought them in when ripe, and set them on the 

 mantelpiece to admire, until a break in the skin, or 

 a soft spot warned of approaching decay. To eat 

 one of these fruits was not thought of. Couldn't 

 one tell by the rank smell of the sappy stems that 

 the plant is poisonous? 



If any one had dared to taste one of these little 

 red "apples," he would have found it tasteless, 

 full of seeds and thick, green partitions, one or 

 more, separating the interior into compartments. 

 The botanist who named the wild tomato plant 

 must have tasted the fruit, and found it bad 

 enough, for he gave it the Latin name, Lycoper- 

 sicum, which means "wolf-peach" — a peach fit 

 only for the meanest of wild beasts, the dread of 

 mankind. He knew the plant belongs to the 



