A cherry tomato is a small variety of tomato

Tomato

The word "tomato" may refer to the plant or the edible, typically red, fruit which it bears. Originating in South America, the tomato was spread around the world following the Spanish colonization of the Americas, and its many varieties are now widely grown, often in greenhouses in cooler...

 that has been cultivated since at least the early 1800s and thought to have originated in Peru and Northern Chile. Cherry tomatoes range in size from a thumbtip up to the size of a golf ball, and can range from being spherical

Sphere

A sphere is a perfectly round geometrical object in three-dimensional space, such as the shape of a round ball. Like a circle in two dimensions, a perfect sphere is completely symmetrical around its center, with all points on the surface lying the same distance r from the center point...

 to slightly oblong in shape. The more oblong ones often share characteristics with plum tomato

Plum tomato

A plum tomato, also known as a processing tomato or paste tomato, is a type of tomato bred for sauce and packing purposes. They are generally oval or cylindrical in shape, with significantly fewer seed compartments than standard round tomatoes and a generally higher solid content, making them more...

es, and are known as grape tomato

Grape tomato

A grape tomato is a class of tomatoes believed to be of southeast Asian origin, shaped similarly to the oval plum tomatoes but having the small size and sweetness of cherry tomatoes. Grape tomatoes produce small and typically oblong fruits...

es. The cherry tomato is regarded as a botanical variety of the cultivated berry, Solanum lycopersicum var.