Tomato, Livingston's Paragon

An indeterminate tomato created by Alexander Livingston of Reynoldsburg OH, and father of the modern tomato. He may not have introduced the world to the tomato, but is the first seedsman to breed tomatoes, and fostered the growth of the commercial tomato industry in the US. Tomatoes were cultivated in the Americas for millennia and integrated into European cuisine since the Columbian Exchange, however, in the US, they were grown as ornamentals and rarely for consumption. They were widely believed to be poisonous well into the 19th century. “The Paragon Tomato,” was described by Livingston as the first “perfectly and uniformly smooth tomato ever introduced.”