[thechat] wolf's peach, an extremely oddball sport (was RE: Odd Ball Sports)

[Joel D Canfield]

> wolf's peach

according to http://lamar.colostate.edu/~samcox/Tomato.html :

"In the 18th century Carl Linnaeus conjured up binomial nomenclature to
name species, and took note of this legend when he named the tomato
Lycopersicon esculentum, which literally means, 'edible wolf peach'"

Well, the same page also says "The common German name for tomatoes
translates to "wolf peach", and was avoided for obvious reasons." which
is bunkum, as far as I know. The German name for tomato is 'tomate'
unless I'm really wigging out. The ColoState article references
http://www.bbg.org/gardening/kitchen/tomatoes/cutler.html which seems
not to exist, but an article at the same site with the name he mentions
makes no reference whatsoever to German. So maybe they sorted it out.

Kinda like when I wrote a term paper in High School wherein I referred
to Bermuda as 'the first place in the United States to use paper money.'

Lycopersicon. Who died and made Linnaeus God, anyway? Why not something
that means 'round, red, and hopefully juicy, but with plenty of firm
flesh to prevent it from squishy when you slice it' ?