Striped tomato: help?

[Torquill]

Hi, all. Our local Master Gardener chapter was gifted with a few tomato plants last season; one grew up to give us a red striped tomato we liked well enough that we'd like to offer plants for sale this year. It did not, however, come with a tag. While I wouldn't even try to find an ID for a red slicer or a pink beefsteak (without DNA fingerprinting, anyway), there are still few enough striped tomatoes available to the general public that I figure it's worth a shot.

It's a regular-leaf, medium-sized (8-10 oz) slicer, with streaks of dark red and light red, and a normal red interior. It's smooth without ribbing/catfacing, no green shoulders, nothing distinctive other than the stripes; it lacks the iridescence to the stripes sometimes found on Baia Nicchia varieties. Taste was quite good and balanced, not tangy or especially sweet. My first thought was Tigerella, but it's definitely too large for that (and too large for Red Zebra too, which is definitely tangy)... does Tigerella have a big brother?

If anybody follows striped varieties and would be willing to hazard a guess, I'll see whether that matches what we have. Otherwise, I suppose it'll end up being Master Gardener Red Stripe, much as I hate renaming varieties.

Thanks.

--Alison

[nancyruhl]

Being that you are in California, I was wondering if you checked out Brad Gates' releases from Wild Boar Farms. Could it be Solar Flare???

[Doug9345]

It seems you are guessing that it was a stray plant or seed and not a cross. I assume that you have saved seed, but how do you know it is going to come true until you grow some of the saved seed out?

Maybe one of Brad Gates tomatoes. His farm is Wild Boar farms.

[Tania]

Alison,

Here is the list of all the striped tomatoes in Tatiana's TOMATObase.

http://tatianastomatobase.com/wiki/C...riped_Tomatoes

171 varieties and counting.

[Torquill]

Nancy, it looks like Solar Flare is red-and-yellow striped; these were definitely red-on-red. It was a good thought, though... We've had a couple of Wild Boar Farms varieties, but the ones we've tried all have a similarity to one another; if you've tried Large Barred Boar you know what I mean by "iridescence". The stripes seem almost metallic. I haven't seen enough of them to know whether that's widespread in varieties from Wild Boar. (Oops, I beg your pardon; I had my wires crossed with Baia Nicchia Farms, which is Fred Hempel, but the comment about Large Barred Boar still stands.)

Doug, I'm guessing it wasn't a cross or stray seed, as it came in a box of donated tomato plants (the garden manager can't remember which one, they got a few donations from different sources) which also had Pink Bulgarian, Red Bull's Heart and a couple of others. Those managed to keep their tags, but I'm willing to bet this one was from named seed too.

And thanks, Tania -- I'm not as familiar with the TOMATObase as I should be, so I hadn't tried that search. Maybe I'll find a match in there. Now to find out how many of them are commercially available vs. varieties being swapped around in the breeding community...

--Alison

[Fred Hempel]

I am not aware of any red with red stripes tomatoes floating around (is it a bicolor?). Do you have a photo?

[Fred Hempel]

It seems like you should track down the person who gifted the tomatoes.

[Torquill]

Not a bicolor, no. The closest I could find was Red Boar, but again, we had fruit that was consistently in the 8oz range, and that variety is listed as 2-4 ounces. Maybe it really was Solar Flare, and the stripes were just more subtle than the pictures suggest...

Regrettably, no pictures -- I wish I had thought to take some, but at the time we hadn't expected it to make the "tomatoes we'd like to sell" list. I'm thinking I may suggest we hold back for a year and order up a few varieties that seem close, to see whether we can find a match. I'm getting less and less comfortable with selling plants of a variety which may have been actively developed, without being able to give credit.

--Alison

[KarenO]

Hello there,
I'm afraid it won't be possible to positively ID your tomato from a photograph. The best you will be able to have is an educated guess even if you find a picture of one that looks like yours. Your only sure bet for a positive ID is to track down whoever planted it.
Karen

[Doug9345]

I agree with Karen. It sounds like it is a really nice tomato. Before I'd start selling it to the general public I'd want another year of growing it to be sure of what you had. I'm also very hesitant to apply a name to a tomato that I don't have a traceable path to. To me it's much worse have two different tomatoes with one name than one tomato with two different names, much worse.

If you do have a red on red large striped tomato and not something that the particular growing conditions produced, them you likely have something unique.

[habitat_gardener]

Definitely grow it out for a few years (not just one) to see if it breeds true and performs consistently at different locations. If you were sharing seeds among experimentally minded folks, that's one thing. But to sell plants to the public? No. And if it does breed true, give it a creative name, please! It should sound like a unique variety, not like something you might have heard of or that is so humdrum that it's unappealing.

Sometime in the past decade the MGs in the San Jose area got a hugely productive big red beefsteak from a packet of Heidi seed, and they liked it so continued to grow it out for several years. The first year (or close to it), I got a plant from a friend who told me it was Heidi, and it wasn't -- turned into a small, nonproductive red that was a waste of garden space. But eventually it became a proven variety that was a favorite of some MGs. Since no one knows whether it was a stray seed, a cross, or a mutation, they've renamed it Palo Alto. I've seen it in other gardens loaded with tomatoes. Someone gave me a plant a year or two ago in midseason, and it did indeed produce lots of big red beefsteaks, but unfortunately it was very late and I ended up picking at least half of them as greenies. I thought it was ok but nothing special.

[Tania]

As Karen said, it is not possible to ID any tomato by pictures or descriptions.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by habitat_gardener

Definitely grow it out for a few years (not just one) to see if it breeds true and performs consistently at different locations. If you were sharing seeds among experimentally minded folks, that's one thing. But to sell plants to the public? No. And if it does breed true, give it a creative name, please! It should sound like a unique variety, not like something you might have heard of or that is so humdrum that it's unappealing.

Sometime in the past decade the MGs in the San Jose area got a hugely productive big red beefsteak from a packet of Heidi seed, and they liked it so continued to grow it out for several years. The first year (or close to it), I got a plant from a friend who told me it was Heidi, and it wasn't -- turned into a small, nonproductive red that was a waste of garden space. But eventually it became a proven variety that was a favorite of some MGs. Since no one knows whether it was a stray seed, a cross, or a mutation, they've renamed it Palo Alto. I've seen it in other gardens loaded with tomatoes. Someone gave me a plant a year or two ago in midseason, and it did indeed produce lots of big red beefsteaks, but unfortunately it was very late and I ended up picking at least half of them as greenies. I thought it was ok but nothing special.

Oh dear, the wonderful tomato I named for Heidi Iyok. from Cameroon, a former student of mine, has been renamed?

Palo Alto? A beefsteak Heidi at first, then not a beefsteak?

Please tell those MGer's that it's not nice to rename a variety, especially since it could have been a stray seed initially, it could have been a cross, who knows what.

Thanks,

Carolyn

[carolyn137]

http://tatianastomatobase.com/wiki/Wisconsin_55_Gold

Read the above and know that it's Alison posting here who was the person who found Wisconsin 55 Gold.

Didn't mean to embarrass you but just to let others here know that you know a LOT about tomatoes.

Carolyn

[habitat_gardener]

Originally Posted by carolyn137

Oh dear, the wonderful tomato I named for Heidi Iyok. from Cameroon, a former student of mine, has been renamed?

Palo Alto? A beefsteak Heidi at first, then not a beefsteak?

Please tell those MGer's that it's not nice to rename a variety, especially since it could have been a stray seed initially, it could have been a cross, who knows what.

No, the tomato they named (or renamed) was not-Heidi. They intended to grow Heidi, but the large red beefsteak that resulted was obviously not-Heidi. It was renamed because it bred true for them, the fruit was obviously nothing like Heidi, and no one could ID it based on anything else they'd grown.