You made a spot for tomatoes in your garden this year, but if you're wondering if that counts as a vegetable patch, it depends whom you ask.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1893 in the case Nix v. Hedden that tomatoes count as vegetables — despite the botanical fact that they're fruits. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Botany provides two definitions for fruit:

Strictly, [it's] the ripened ovary of a plant and its contents. More loosely, the term is extended to the ripened ovary and seeds together with any structure with which they are combined.

To illustrate this definition, let's focus on a fruit more commonly recognized as such: the apple. Botanists consider an apple core a fruit because it is a ripened ovary containing seeds. But using the looser definition of fruit, an entire apple (the core and the flesh surrounding the core) is also considered a fruit.



Common garden "vegetables" that actually count as fruit include cucumbers, squash, peppers, and yes, tomatoes. Vegetables encompass all other edible parts of a plant that aren't fruit, including roots, tubers, stems, and leaves. Potatoes, carrots, greens, fennel bulbs, and onions are examples of true vegetables.

So why was it so important that tomatoes be defined legally as a vegetable? Well, back in 1883, a tariff was put in place to protect domestic vegetable growers by taxing imported vegetables.

In 1886, the plaintiffs (Nix) imported some tomatoes from the West Indies. The collector of the port of New York (Hedden) imposed a duty on the tomatoes, which he considered vegetables. The plaintiffs paid the duty under protest and sued Hedden, arguing that tomatoes are botanically a fruit and therefore should not be taxed as a vegetable.

This content is imported from {embed-name}. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

The case eventually ended up in the Supreme Court. The justices decided that while tomatoes fit the botanical definition of fruit, consumers think of tomatoes as vegetables and that is how they should be legally defined.



This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io