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Description

Tomato plants are vines, initially decumbent, and could grow up to 3 m (9.8 ft), although erect bush varieties have been bred, generally 100 cm (3 ft 3 in) tall or shorter. Indeterminate types are "tender" perennials, dying annually in temperate climates (they are originally native to tropical highlands), although they can live up to three years in a greenhouse in some cases. Determinate types are annual in all climates.

Tomato plants are dicots, and grow as a series of branching stems, with a terminal bud at the tip that does the actual growing. When the tip eventually stops growing, whether because of pruning or flowering, lateral buds take over and grow into other, fully functional, vines.

Tomato vines are typically pubescent, meaning covered with fine short hairs. The hairs facilitate the vining process, turning into roots wherever the plant is in contact with the ground and moisture, especially if the vine's connection to its original root has been damaged or severed.

Most tomato plants have compound leaves, and are called regular leaf (RL) plants, but some cultivars have simple leaves known as potato leaf (PL) style because of their resemblance to that particular relative. Of RL plants, there are variations, such as rugose leaves, which are deeply grooved, and variegated, angora leaves, which have additional colors where a genetic mutation causes chlorophyll to be excluded from some portions of the leaves.

The leaves are 10–25 cm (4–10 in) long, odd pinnate, with five to nine leaflets on petioles, each leaflet up to 8 cm (3 in) long, with a serrated margin; both the stem and leaves are densely glandular-hairy.

Their flowers, appearing on the apical meristem, have the anthers fused along the edges, forming a column surrounding the pistil 's style. Flowers are bisexual and able to self fertilise. The anthers bend into a cone-like structure, surrounding the stigma. The flowers are 1–2 cm (1 ⁄ 2 – 3 ⁄ 4 in) across, yellow, with five pointed lobes on the corolla; they are borne in a cyme of three to twelve together.

Although in culinary terms, tomato is regarded as a vegetable, its fruit is classified botanically as a berry. As a true fruit, it develops from the ovary of the plant after fertilization, its flesh comprising the pericarp walls. The fruit contains hollow spaces full of seeds and moisture, called locular cavities. These vary, among cultivated species, according to type. Some smaller varieties have two cavities, globe-shaped varieties typically have three to five, beefsteak tomatoes have a great number of smaller cavities, while paste tomatoes have very few, very small cavities.

For propagation, the seeds need to come from a mature fruit, and must be lightly fermented to remove the gelatinous outer coating and then dried before use.