Tomato ID?

9 years ago

Yeah, yeah, I know. It's impossible to ID a tomato just from seeing photos. But I figure it couldn't hurt to ask anyway.

Anyway, here are the tomatoes. The larger one is about a pound and a half and the smaller one is about a pound. The pound and a half is average size. Top view.

Bottom view.

The smaller tomato cut in half. It's nearly seedless (only 2 dozen seeds in the whole fruit).

A pic of the leaves I took back in June when the plant was smaller (hence the specks of cottonwood fluff on the leaves).

History: My dad got the seeds from his uncle when he died a decade ago and gave them to me. They were in a pill bottle that was unlabeled. The only other thing I know about their history is that my dad believes his uncle brought them with him from West Virginia when he moved here to Michigan.

Now I've grown these a couple of times previously and the other two times the fruits have been fully red. So the genetics are somewhat unstable. The previous red fruits were also large and had those ugly markings on the top of the fruit (this leads me to believe that it's a variety trait rather than from something cultural but I could be wrong). Unfortunately I have only grown a grand total of three of these plants due mostly to lack of space so there may be more genetic variation than I'm noting. I've got more space now and plan on growing more plants next year.

They are definitely a late tomato and have been the previous two times as well. This year the plants started to have very small fruits back in late June or early July (I started slacking in keeping notes during this time) but they have finally just started ripening within the last week. The other varieties of tomatoes I'm growing this year have been ripening for a few weeks now.

As for the taste, I don't know. I tried a small piece and didn't like it but then I don't like raw tomatoes to begin with. So I'll have get other people's opinions and I'll report back on this.

Rodney

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Comments (6)

carolyn137
9 years ago
All I can tell you is that it's one of several hundred gold/red bicolors and no way to tell which one, if yours doesn't have a name there's no way to compare it to any known ones since there are so many,. b'c they all look pretty much the same. Tastes can be different but that can vary from season to season just with one variety.

Some of them do ripen up redish/pink, a good example is Mary Robinson's German Bicolor, which I've linked to below at the bottom, so not a genetic problem,just a trait of some varieties. In that link you'll see some fully pinkish red ones and you'll also seethat I was a source of seed to Tania.

West Virginia is one of the places in the SE that one finds all these gold/red bicolors, so that sounds right as far as your history.

it's felt that these bicolors originated in Germany and seeds were brought to the US when they immigrated.

My brother now lives in NC and a person down the road offered him seeds of their family bicolor but I said no to my brother since I'd already grown many of them and didn't want to grow more.

They are very finicky as to weather and a variety may be sweet and lucious one season and the same variety bland and mealy the next season,

So no, I can't tell you which specific variety it might be and it might not even have a name as did the one my brother offered me.

Just to give you an idea of the number of bicolors that are known, here's a link to Tania's website and my SSE Yearbooks, for members, have many more.

http://t.tatianastomatobase.com:88/wiki/Category:Bi-Color_Tomatoes

Hope that helps.

Carolyn

Here is a link that might be useful: Mary Robinson's German Bicolor
PupillaCharites
9 years ago
Hi Forgotten One ;-)

You'll never now for sure as everyone has been telling me on my bicolor orange heirloom.

But if no one else has a better idea, you might consider it a line of Hillbilly, which was from West Virginia and is big, and seems to be a source for that sort of germplasm (via where the Germans settled about ref:Dr. Carolyn). Good you took a picture of the leaves.

Hillbilly

Hillbilly Potato Leaf

Happy Growing!
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PupillaCharites
9 years ago
Ha! She beat me to the post. Can't snooze around here!
theforgottenone1013 (SE MI zone 5b/6a)
Original Author
9 years ago
Yeah, those are pretty much the answers I was expecting. :) Thanks for replying.

Rodney
seysonn
9 years ago
Pupilla nailed it. It definitely Hillbilly .

Google it.
carolyn137
9 years ago
No Seysonn, not definitely Hillbilly.

Lots of Germans immigrated to the US between the late1800's and the 1920's and settled in PA and VA and WVA where they worked in the steel mills and in mines.

They also settled in NC and SC and GA and many moved west, so such bicolors were also found in OH and IL and Indiana as well as other places since some of the Germans settled in TX as well.

I have a good friend in W VA and he's introduced I think three bicolors now, named after the persons he got the seeds from. I can't remember the names,but he SSE listed all of them.

So not definitely Hillbilly at all.

Carolyn