Hi ELaine! I have grown in several years. IT is very meaty and has few seeds. I have switched to Cuoro d toro because it had a zippier flavor for salsa, which is what I do with it also. Cour Di Bue is still very good and a fine salsa tomato. I have had some of both of these varieties get well over a pound so it's a lot of tomato for your buck. Production has always been good for me too and both varieties have survived the Wyoming spring weather well.

I thought these two varieties were the same thing? In other words, heart of the bull or bull's heart, just in two different languages - cuoro de toro in spanish, cuor di bue in italian? I purchased some Toro seeds and will grow this variety for the first time this year. But I am curious -Can anyone confirm if these are in fact the same variety or different?

We know these as Heart of the Bull in English, meaning heart shaped, but they're also known as Heart of the Bull, or similar, in Italian and Spanish language versions.

And some are red, and some are pink, as listed in the SSE Yearbook, so they ***aren't all the same exact variety***. What's common to them is that they're heart shaped.

A new one for me, name wise, is one called Serdtse Buivola which is a new one I listed in the new SSE 2009 Yearbook and it's the first one that translates out as Heart of the Buffalo. Gotta love it. LOL

I've grown Cuor di Bue and Bill's Grow Italian site is a good one to get it from and I say that b'c right now there are some Cuor di Bue's being sold, with pictures, that aren't the correct shape at all and I doubt if they're the correct variety.

I love heart shaped varieties almost above all others, and there are several long threads here at GW which you can find via the search at the bottom of the page where variety after variety are listed.

Carolyn

Thanks, everyone, for the input. I figured getting them right from Italy would be the right seeds. I'm glad to see they are going to probably fit the bill for what I'm wanting them to be.

adk13 and brokenbar, if you want to try some of these, the package has plenty for me to share some with you.

Elaine

and I've also seen a yellow called Courve de Pigeon (Heart of the Pigeon, offered by HappyCat Organics.

What color is a pigeon's heart, anyway?

jan

Elaine -very sweet of you to offer -let me know if you want to trade a few of your bue's for a few of my toro's!! :-)

what about heat resisatnce?

On March 1, 2016, I planted 5 fresh seeds of "Seeds From italy's" Cuor di Bue with all my other cultivars. They germanated fine, but all 5 immediately showed themselves to be wimpy little seedlings. Throughout the spring, they grew farther and farther behind better cultivars in the same trays. I gave 4 away and planted the best of the weak seedlings in a 5-gallon pot to discover the taste. (It did not show enough vigor to deserve a spot in my beds.) It remained the smallest of my twenty plants in 5-gal pots, even smaller than "Bush" cultivars. It produced about 6 fruit all season while the other potted cultivars in the identical growing situation produced many dozens each.

Taste was very good, but not superior to productive beefstakes, like Big Boy, Brandy Boy, and (Italian) Red Pear.

Because of the wimpiness and ridiculously low production, I will never grow it again. If anyone wants to waste garden space, I will send my year-old seed in a SASE.

Zone 6a Columbus OH

There are different regional tomatoes called "cuor(e) di bue" in Italy. Some are oxheart shaped. Others are large piriform tomatoes. It's a mistake to assume that they are or should be the same because they have the same name. Usually, the piriform types have a region/town specified in their name (Ligure, di Albenga, etc.)

I've heard good things about the Franchi cuor di bue, which is an oxheart shaped tomato. I have always had terrific results from Franchi seed, so there's no need to doubt that their oxheart is an exception. There are also many other good-tasting oxheart shaped tomato varieties out there.

I've grown a large piriform (the Red Pear sel. Franchi), and it was excellent. The company told me it was a selection they made of a local large pear tomato from Bergamo. A sweet, juicy, flavorful tomato ideal for fresh eating. But many other ruffled tomatoes, including some piriform tomatoes, are mild in flavor and drier and better for sauce.

As with everything, go by specific variety, not by category.

Carolyn: I've grown Cuor di Bue and Bill's Grow Italian site is a good one to get it from and I say that b'c right now there are some Cuor di Bue's being sold, with pictures, that aren't the correct shape at all and I doubt if they're the correct variety.

The piriform ones are not "wrong". They're just a different variety that is also called "cuor di bue".

Revived vintage thread.

I concur with Gorbelly. Piriform is an upside down heart shape, i.e. narrow at stem end and wide on the blossom side. So they are "Pear" shaped. Good example : FRANCHI. I will grow it this coming season. Thanks Gorbelly for the seeds. I will also grow " coeur de boeuf " which is French name for Hear of Beef.But this one is not Piriform.

The name actually is a class of tomatoes and not a specific variety. It is like "Beefsteak" referring to a class of fairly large tomatoes for slicing.

Sey

I did not say that all coure di bues were wrong, I was referring to a situation where two seed sites had offered the same wrong one,with pictures,and neither was correct.

Baker Creek was one and I forget the name of the other one.

Baker Creek went back to their supplier in Italy and found that indeed they had been sent the wrong variety. They reoffered with the new seeds and all was well.

It does get confusing since there's also several hearts of the Bull from Spain and spelled differently at different sites. The spanish ones are spelled Bue, not Bui

So that's what I was referring to and no,I definitely did NOT say what Bill was offering was wrong.Bill at that time was only offering seeds from Franchi,and darn good seeds they were.

Most of the time when I get a notice from Houzz,I open it,take a look and ignore it but this time I didn't since what was said was wrong. It took me a long time to get back here since apparently my membership had expired,so I had to jump thru a series of hoops to get back in and chose a new password. My alternative was to PM gorbelly or Seysonn or Shule at Tville since they are members there, and I know that quite a bit that is posted at Tville re tomatoes ends up here.

Carolyn, 77 and still not in heaven.<G>

From what I understand, Bill no longer owns Seeds From Italy/growitalian.com. Dan Nagengast and his wife now own and run the site. They do a great job. I've ordered from them, bugged them with questions, etc., and they've been very responsive and conscientious.

You are absolutely correct. Bill said he was getting too old to continue and was at that time looking for someone to take over and I'm glad he chose well.

Bill and I interacted privately for quite a while since we had been good friends. Then nothing.

Do you know if Bill is still alive? Maybe asking the new owners might be the way to go. And if still alive please ask them to tell Bill that Carolyn Male in upstate NY, wishes him well, hopefully he will remember me,and hopes he is OK.

Carolyn, who didn't just buy tomato seed, but also bean seed, herbs,melons, anything he could get from Franchi.

Oh, I'm not personal friends with Dan. Just a very satisfied customer. And I have no name to speak of in gardening. I think you'd be more likely to get the information you want if you reached out yourself.

adk13: I thought these two varieties were the same thing? In other words, heart of the bull or bull's heart, just in two different languages - cuoro de toro in spanish, cuor di bue in italian? I purchased some Toro seeds and will grow this variety for the first time this year. But I am curious -Can anyone confirm if these are in fact the same variety or different?

"Cuore de toro" is Italian, although to be correct Italian, it would have to be "cuor(e) di toro". "Toro" usually refers to an intact bull, while "bue" is an ox, i.e., a castrated male used as a draft animal. However, I have never personally seen an Italian source call a tomato "cuore di toro". I've only ever seen "cuor(e) di bue". I wonder whether this name is the result of too-literal American renaming of a variety with Italian roots, or an old Italian-American variety. Maybe something like immigrants trading seeds, and an Italian American family growing a pink Eastern European heart from their Russian friends but renaming it "cuore de toro" because it resembles their grandparents' "cuor di bue". Just a speculative example, but stuff like that happens all the time in the world of heirloom seeds. It could also be a totally made-up name by someone who speaks neither Italian nor Spanish. It could be in archaic/an obscure dialect of Spanish or Italian. You never know.

There are tomatoes called "corazón de toro" in Spanish, "coeur de boeuf" in French, "Ochsenherz" in German, etc. Some may or may not have started as the same variety, traveled with human migration and been renamed, etc. Or they could just be named some variation of "ox heart" due to shared appearance. It's impossible to know without information about the seed's history and lineage. Even two different tomatoes both called, say, "coeur de boeuf" could be different varieties, as evidenced by Italian varieties called "cuor di bue" which are very obviously different (oxhearts vs. piriforms).

Gorbelly

The 5 awful cuor di bue that I planted were fresh Franchi seed from seeds from italy. All grew horribly slowly and were weak small plants, and the one that I kept only produced about 6 fruit with horribly late DTM.

Like you said, the italian Red Pear was a great productive early plant that tastes as good as their Cuor di Bue. I will continue it, but never again that horrible Cuor di Bue.

Franchi is also selling a very poor non-ribbed version of Constoluto Genovese now. In seedsfromitaly's catalog, they call it CG Valente. It produced half as much as their Red Pear, and the fruit did not taste as good as other CG or Red Pear.

Since I love the old CG, I grew 5 different Italian OPs last year. Red Pear is a keeper. I just want to warn people that that Cuor di Bue is not worthwhile for the few fruit, and their current CG is really inferior.

Other people have reported great experiences with it. As we all know, sometimes, some varieties don't do well in our gardens, even if they do well in others' or we get a batch of bad seed or a new strain is designed to address a problem at the expense of a quality of another quality which we liked better. And all seed companies, even the best, occasionally produce bad or off seed. That's the nature of dealing in a living product.

It's good to give a heads up, but I would personally never give a blanket recommendation based only on my experiences, especially if many others have reported the opposite. I would also try again another year with fresh seed if a variety that is reputed to be great by many people in conditions generally comparable to mine does poorly in my garden--if it's a variety that I am particularly interested in.

As for Franchi, I don't expect all of their seeds to do fabulously in my garden. That would be foolish--no seed company can accomplish that. What I do know is that when I compare results with Franchi seed vs. the same variety from a different source, the Franchi seed will generally outperform the others. But, as with all garden things, YMMV and there are always exceptions.

Carolyn

I am still breathing and growing tomatoes & I am glad to see that you are also. I am living in SW Florida and having a hard time figuring out how to grow in this climate in a community garden with every bug imaginable. These days I do a lot more fishing from my kayak than fighting bugs & incredible tomato diseases.

Anyway, not sure I can solve the cuor di bue issue. I have seen oxheart tomatoes in all shapes: heart like cuor di bue; comice pear shape like piroform or the Franchi version, Red Pear; last year I grew some cuor di bue d'albenga from a south Italian company and most of them were round.

I don't think shape is the deciding characteristic, but rather the texture inside. All of them have that wonderful smooth jell sack and smooth inside. Amazing tomatos. My all time favorite of the oxhearts I have grown is the Red Pear.

For what it is worth, Italian seed companies can only sell varieties that are on the Italian Government official list of varieties. For example, if you look on the back of a Franchi Pack, it will tell you the official name (look for Varieta: _____.

Every once in a while they may give a seed a different name on the front of the pack for marketing purposes, but the official name is always on the back. For example, they used to call a zucchini variety zucchino da fiore (flower) but on the back it is labeled as a San Pasquale since it really is just a sport of the San Pasquale variety.

Good Growing. If you can believe it, I am going to start tomatoes and peppers in a few weeks. No one in Sarasota tries to grow anything in June, July & August and most folks put tomatoes out in mid September or even October. It seems so wrong.

Bill McKay

What a surprise to see you posting here,only come here when I get a notice where someone said Carolyn said %^$&*, and I didn't. LOL. I'm trying hard to remember the name of your original website, wasn't it Grow Italian or something like that and You got most of your seeds from Franchi in Italy.?

Yes, I'm still alive and will be 78 next Monday, but am permanently homebound, but I give seeds to Rob,a local man,who raises my plants for me, brings them to my home and Freda, one of the ladies who helps here at home, plants them and hopefully takes care of them.

To date I've now grown over 4,000 plus varieties. I don't agree with you that shape is not that important, having grown, for instance, since you mentioned it yourself, many hearts, ones from Spain, Italy, France, Croatia,Greece, etc. and that includes the many Albengas as well,and yes,Cour di Bue, spelled different ways,depending, usually, on whether it's from Spain or Italy.

I still make a large seed offer each year, now 2 years late with the 2017 one and have 7 folks on a group e-mail who do seed production for me and that doesn't include the seeds that are sent to me already processed and ready to go.

Bill, I'd really like to catch up with you so am going to give you my e-mail address here, and folks, this is ONLY for Bill, since in the past when this was the original Garden Web, I used to get sent questions to answer, as well as do seed offers here,but I no longer do that.

So here it is Bill

cmale@aol.com

Carolyn, who will then bring you up to date on other stuff she's doing,and yes, all legit. LOL