Toothless Tiger

[cosmicgardener]

I planted Tigerella just so the grandies could have some stripey tomatoes ( they refuse to eat tomatoes except in Ketchup and I thought this might intrigue them enough. ). Not a stripe to be seen!

They taste quite good - sweet, have retained more yellow than red character but alas, they do not have one stripe either in the greehouse or on the outside plantings.

Is this due to some mis-management on my part?

Has anyone else experienced stripeless stripeys? Some of Arcadia growing next to them have vague stripes and no, I didn't mix up the labels so there may have been a grubby cross.

[carolyn137]

Cosmic,

The original Tigerella is a striped tomato variety. It's a small red with definite gold stripes that was also called Mr. Stripey years ago. It was bred by the Glasshouse Research works in England and sister varieties from the same cross are Tangella and Craigella.

What you're growing is the large so called gold/red bicolor that unfortunatrly was named Mr Stripey b'c the folks at Seeds by Design in CA didn't know there already was a Mr. Stripey, aka Tigerella, thus confusing lots of folks everywhere.

Mr Stripey, the large gold/red bicolored one, doesn't have definite stripes and nor do the other over 100 similar bicolored varieties.

They have a pinkish/red blush that starts at the blossom end and works it's way up the fruit, and how far that blush goes is dependent on the variety and sometimes the growing conditions.

And that same pinish/red blush also is found as a marbling inside the fruits.

Because the blush color is also found inside the fruits it's called a bicolor.

The original Tigerella and others that are truly striped, such as Big Tiger and many others, are not bicolors.

Hope that helps.

Carolyn

[nctomatoman]

I was thinking that, Carolyn, but he refers to them as Tigerella. I've never heard of Tigerella being used as an AKA for Mr Stripey - just the other way around.

perhaps things are even worse than we thought!

What are the size of the stripeless tomatoes? Tigerella should be a bit larger than golf ball sized and very round. The other, recently named Mr Stripey is a large - one pound or greater - oblate fruit.