Potato or Tomato: how to tell them apart?
Potato and Tomato look alike and are often mixed up. Here is how to tell them apart, feature by feature, with their photos and the details to look for.
⚡ The quick answer
Potato
Solanum tuberosum
Tomato
Solanum lycopersicum
Before fruiting, their divided foliage is almost impossible to tell apart — both are closely related members of the Solanaceae. It is the stem and above all the fruit that settle it.
🍃 Leaves
Compound, pinnate, dark green, characteristic smell when crushed
Compound, pinnate, cut, downy and fragrant when crushed
🌸 Flowers
White, pink or purple depending on variety, with 5 petals fused into a star
Yellow, in small drooping clusters
🍎 Fruits
Small green berry, toxic, rarely formed in cultivation
Fleshy berry, red (or yellow, orange...) when ripe, very variable in size and shape depending on the variety
🪵 Bark
Angular herbaceous stem; the tubers eaten form on underground stems
Hairy, brittle herbaceous stem, giving off a characteristic smell when crushed
📏 Size
50 to 80 cm tall
50 cm to 2 m tall depending on variety and training
🗺️ Habitat
Grown in vegetable gardens and as a field crop
Grown in vegetable gardens, under cover or outdoors
⚠️ Toxicity
Tuber edible once cooked; the green parts (leaves, stems, berries, greened or sprouted tubers) contain solanine, which is toxic
Ripe fruit edible; the green parts (leaves, stems, unripe fruits) contain tomatine, toxic in large quantities
🔎 And from the Tomato side
Before fruiting, their cut foliage is almost impossible to tell apart — both are closely related members of the nightshade family. It is the stem and above all the fruit that settle it.
🌿 Go further
Want to practise spotting these details on real photos? Floraneo offers profiles and quizzes for dozens of look-alike species.
ℹ️ Educational profile — do not use it to judge whether a plant is edible or safe.