Is a Tomato a Fruit? The 1893 Supreme Court Answer

Ask a botanist and a tomato is a fruit: it grows from the flower and carries the seeds. Ask a cook and it is a vegetable: it belongs in the salad, not the fruit bowl. In 1893 the question landed in the United States Supreme Court, and the answer came down to money.

The tax that started it

In the 1880s, imported vegetables were taxed and imported fruits came in free, under the Tariff Act of 1883. For a produce importer that gap was real money. John Nix ran one of the largest produce sellers in New York, and when the customs collector at the Port of New York, Edward Hedden, charged him the vegetable duty on a shipment of tomatoes, Nix paid under protest and sued to get the money back.

His argument was simple and, on the science, correct: a tomato develops from the flower's ovary and carries the seeds, so botanically it is a fruit, and fruit was meant to enter duty-free.

What the court actually decided

In 1893 the Supreme Court ruled unanimously against Nix. The tomato, for the purposes of the tariff, was a vegetable. Justice Horace Gray wrote that the law had to be read in its ordinary, everyday sense, not its botanical one.

The reasoning was almost domestic. Tomatoes, the court noted, are grown in kitchen gardens, and they are served at dinner with the soup, the fish, or the meat, not as a dessert the way fruits are. In common speech people called them vegetables, and Congress had written the tariff in common speech. Botany lost to the dinner table.

Why it still comes up

Nix v. Hedden is a small case with a long life, because it is a clean example of a rule courts lean on all the time: when a statute uses an ordinary word, it usually carries the ordinary meaning, not the technical one. The tomato just happens to be the tastiest illustration.

It also settled nothing botanical. A tomato is still a fruit by every measure that matters to the plant. The court only decided how to tax it, which is why both answers are right depending on who is asking. The botanist and the cook were never really arguing about the same thing.

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Common questions

Is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable?
Both, depending on the question. Botanically it is a fruit, because it grows from the flower and contains the seeds. In cooking and in United States trade law it is treated as a vegetable, after the Supreme Court ruled that way in Nix v. Hedden in 1893. Neither answer is wrong; they answer different questions.
What was Nix v. Hedden?
An 1893 United States Supreme Court case about whether imported tomatoes should be taxed as vegetables. Imported vegetables were taxed and fruits were not, so an importer argued tomatoes were botanically fruit. The court ruled unanimously that for the tariff, tomatoes count as vegetables in their ordinary, everyday sense.
Did the Supreme Court say a tomato is not a fruit?
No. The court accepted that a tomato is botanically a fruit. It ruled only that the tax law used the word vegetable in its common, kitchen sense, and that in that sense a tomato is a vegetable. It decided a tax question, not a botany question.

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