DESCRIPTION:
The tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) is a herbaceous, usually sprawling plant in the nightshade family widely cultivated for its edible fruit. Savory in flavor, the fruit of most varieties ripens to a distinctive red color. Tomato plants typically reach to 1 - 3 metres (3 - 10 ft) in height, and have a weak, woody stem that often vines over other plants. The leaves are 10 - 25 centimetres (4 - 10 in) long, odd pinnate, with 5 - 9 leaflets on petioles, each leaflet up to 8 centimetres (3 in) long, with a serrated margin; both the stem and leaves are densely glandular-hairy.
The flowers are 1 - 2 centimetres (0.4 - 0.8 in) across, yellow, with five pointed lobes on the corolla; they are borne in a cyme of 3 - 12 together. It is a perennial, often grown outdoors in temperate climates as an annual.
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