What are the chances?

[TZ-OH6]

In my germinations this spring I had one Anna Russian pop out potato-leaf, and one Red Brandywine-potatoleaf, pop out regular leaf. I quickly sowed another dozen seeds of each to see if the packs had mixed seeds or crossed seeds in them. So far only those single plants have come up 'off-type'. There is no chance that a seed mix-up happend on my end.

Can I reasonably assume a leaf mutation [vs. a foreign seed] if the Anna Russian-PL come out heart-shaped?



The Red-Brandy-RL would have to have identical fruit to the potatoleafs to be a mutation. I have a handful of other red RLs to compare it to for variation. Whatever that Brandywine turns out to be it won't be a real red Brandywine, since the potatoleaf parentage is a mystery. But, maybe I'll get a Pseudo Earl's Faux ;-)

How often do you all [Y'all, yous-guys] find foreign seeds in your seed packs?

[moulman]

While it is not routine, it does happen fairly often.


I am not familiar with Anna Russian - are they hearts?

[Hilde]

This is an interesting thread, thanks for starting it! Are you going to grow out your two surprises to see what you have?

How often does a leaf mutation happen? How common are mutations in general?

I had 1 RL and 5 PL seedlings come up from seeds saved from one pink Brandywine tomato last fall. I can't see where I could have screwed up and put the wrong seed there, but is it possible that one seed would turn out RL and the rest PL from the same fruit?

I also had 2 of 15 Olive Hill seedlings come up RL. Those might be crosses, because the seeds were saved by myself from several Olive Hill tomatoes.

I am interested to hear what others are doing when one seedling comes up with a different leaf type. Do you grow it out to see what you have or do you just pull it out and toss it right away?

Hilde

[carolyn137]

[quote=TZ-OH6;97996]In my germinations this spring I had one Anna Russian pop out potato-leaf, and one Red Brandywine-potatoleaf, pop out regular leaf. I quickly sowed another dozen seeds of each to see if the packs had mixed seeds or crossed seeds in them. So far only those single plants have come up 'off-type'. There is no chance that a seed mix-up happend on my end.

******
Red Brandywine should be RL. The PL Brandywine that you have isn't Red Brandywine and some PL RB's are listed at several places. Perhaps you got yours from TGS.

Are these two varieties ones that you bought seed commercially?

*****
Can I reasonably assume a leaf mutation [vs. a foreign seed] if the Anna Russian-PL come out heart-shaped?

That's a dicey question. There's more than one kind of mutation that can occur and if it were a spontaneous mutation affecting just the leaf form gene that might be true, but some mutations can affect other changes in addition to leaf form.

******
The Red-Brandy-RL would have to have identical fruit to the potatoleafs to be a mutation. I have a handful of other red RLs to compare it to for variation. Whatever that Brandywine turns out to be it won't be a real red Brandywine, since the potatoleaf parentage is a mystery. But, maybe I'll get a Pseudo Earl's Faux ;-)

*****
What you have now, the PL RB, is a faux RB, as I mentioned above. So if you get an RL it's going to be a faux RL RB.

******
How often do you all [Y'all, yous-guys] find foreign seeds in your seed packs?

******

Again were these purchased seeds, or trades b'c it can make a difference in terms of seed purity and it makes a difference in terms of which companies you buy from as well.

[PaulF]

How often? Not very, but it does happen.

What do I do with the off-leafed plants? Give them to somebody who doesn't really care if the variety is true or not. I let them live to produce tomatoes for somebody; those folks are not into seed saving anyway and to most of those people a tomato is a tomato.

[robin303]

In November I bought some Burpee Onion seeds and they were flower seeds. I even e-mailed them knowing they would never respond and I couldn't believe they answered back. I had to if I wanted to is tell them the Pkg date, lot number, where bought and proof of purchase. Heck I'm not going to do all that for $1.09. I thought it was more comical than anything else.
You would think they would send me a pack. I can't even make that up.

[TZ-OH6]

The seeds are from Tomatofest. It had already been posted here or at GW that their Red Brandywines were PL...prossibly why they were on sale this year...Seeds by Design originated these as I understand it. I was expecting to get the PL red brandys. I wanted them because because there are so few PL red tomatoes out there. Someone also posted that their Cherokee Purple from Tomatofest were coming up PL, but mine did not...all 15 came up RL. Last year I did get a mislabeled packet of seeds from Tomatofest last year... Anna Russians that came out to be what looked like Russo Sicilian Toggeta. This year's ARs were a replacement pack.

The PL red brandywine has been for sale for several years, and I hope somebody gives it a proper name.




Yes, I will be growing out the two oddballs.

[carolyn137]

TZ, I reread your first post and hadn't realized you'd germinated a dozen more seeds and got no more deviations from the norm.

So that suggests to me that the PL Anna Russian may indeed be a stray seed, but you'll know soon enough.

The PL Red Brandywine started being distributed around 2000 and I know that the PL RB listed by TGS and Chuck Wyatt's old site were from Seeds by Design. And if one germinated those all the seedlings gave PL plants.

I don't know the exact origin of the Tomatofest RB seeds and haven't asked Gary and won't be asking him. Just curious but are the PL RB seeds on sale advertised as being PL RB with any other comment saying that true RB is RL? If not, that wouldn't surprise me b'c Linda at TGS lists both a PL and an RL Red Brandywine and neither one is true RB. She went out and got true RB from the Landis Museum and lists that.

She continues to list the others as they've been listed from the get go b'c so many folks like them, whatever they are, and since SBD doesn't know no one will know.

[TZ-OH6]

Carolyn,
No, The RBs were not advertized as being PL at the time.

I just checked the site again and see that the description has been changed. I'm not to happy about it now that I see it.


"Old Amish potato-leaf heirloom dating back to 1885. Named after Brandywine Creek in Chester County, PA. Large, vigorous vines produce 8-12 ounce, deep-red fruits in clusters of 4 to 6. Excellent, robust, old-fashioned tomatoey flavors."

[carolyn137]

"Old Amish potato-leaf heirloom dating back to 1885. Named after Brandywine Creek in Chester County, PA. Large, vigorous vines produce 8-12 ounce, deep-red fruits in clusters of 4 to 6. Excellent, robust, old-fashioned tomatoey flavors."

And when you bought the seeds nothing was said about being PL?

That's not right to advertize RB as being PL, b'c it isn't. I just may contact Gary and ask him what's up.

[TZ-OH6]

No, nothing was said about the PL. I would have called him on it at the time (before Christmas when I ordered) if it had.

While we are on the subject, where did Tom Hauch of Heirloom Seeds get the Landis Valley RB such that he could trace its history? I would expect to see a blurb such as...seed obtained from an amish family who had been growing it for xxx years... but all I see is a gap from 1885 until now. How did it get from those farmers to Hauch?

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by TZ-OH6

No, nothing was said about the PL. I would have called him on it at the time (before Christmas when I ordered) if it had.

While we are on the subject, where did Tom Hauch of Heirloom Seeds get the Landis Valley RB such that he could trace its history? I would expect to see a blurb such as...seed obtained from an amish family who had been growing it for xxx years... but all I see is a gap from 1885 until now. How did it get from those farmers to Hauch?

Tom didn't get the Landis Valley strain, which is not a strain.

Tom was the first to get what we know as Red Brandywine from an SSE listing and he still considers it his signature tomato at his website.

He sent seeds to Steve Miller at the Landis Museum in PA. It was Steve Miller who did the background work and was able to find out that the variety was Amish, etc.

If you go to Victory Seeds you'll find an article written by Craig about the background of the ones with Brandywine as part of the name. He did the family ones and I suppplied the information for the ones that were created and the ones that resulted from chance X pollinations.

[TZ-OH6]

I've read Craig's article many times. It stops where my questions start. Some sites list the Landis Valley strain Brandywine as the original Chester County PA, Red Brandywine, as opposed to offerings of just Red Brandywine. I am assuming that in one way or another Landis Valey strain RB is the Heirloom Seeds Red Brandywine. If it isn't then they both have the same background blurb about Chester County PA.

All that doesn't really matter for my point.

My main point is that I would like to know what the evidence is that links the seeds Hauch had to those Amish farmers in 1885. Where did Hauch get the seeds in the first place? Did he name it Brandywine (after the creek)? Did the amish farmers name it Brandywine in 1885? or did the Amish buy Brandywine seeds from Johnson and Stokes or Burpee in the 1880s?

Generally researchers don't like to do a bunch of background work and then state their conclusion without giving the supporting evidence. Did anybody get the first hand scoop from Steve Miller who did the background work?

[carolyn137]

[quote=TZ-OH6;98269]I've read Craig's article many times. It stops where my questions start. Some sites list the Landis Valley strain Brandywine as the original Chester County PA, Red Brandywine, as opposed to offerings of just Red Brandywine. I am assuming that in one way or another Landis Valey strain RB is the Heirloom Seeds Red Brandywine. If it isn't then they both have the same background blurb about Chester County PA.

As I said above, it was Tom who got Red Brandywine out of the Yearbook, already named Red Brandywine, and I've asked Tom time and time again if he remembers who he got it from, and he doesn't remember. He sent those same seeds to Steve Miller at the Landis Museum, so they are the same variety, same RB.

All that doesn't really matter for my point.

******
My main point is that I would like to know what the evidence is that links the seeds Hauch had to those Amish farmers in 1885. Where did Hauch get the seeds in the first place? Did he name it Brandywine (after the creek)? Did the amish farmers name it Brandywine in 1885? or did the Amish buy Brandywine seeds from Johnson and Stokes or Burpee in the 1880s?

I think I asnwered most of your questions above. The evidence that links RB to an Amish source was done by Steve Miller who reported back to Tom, who as I said above, got the seeds from the SSE Yearbook.

The companies Burpee and Johnson and Stokes are not part of the RB picture although they have been raised re Brandywine and indirectly J and S re RB. Burpee likes to claim that Mikado is Brandywine, but the evidence is not there and Craig has discussed that at length here at Tvill, and Will Weaver is the one who claimed that J and S was the source of Brandywine but those who have the original catalog for that date, and I've seen them, show just an ink drawing, and no mention of color or leaf form is given, so some have indeed have said that perhaps the J and S one could have been RB.

No way to ever say one way or another.

*****
Generally researchers don't like to do a bunch of background work and then state their conclusion without giving the supporting evidence. Did anybody get the first hand scoop from Steve Miller who did the background work?

Yes, and I said above Steve reported back to Tom Hauch.

When doing research on varieties, and I've done a lot of it, there often aren 't any specific journals or anything like that. You have to go on what you're told many times and you have to know your source of information in order to know it's believable.

It's much easier to research older commercial OP's than it is family OP heirlooms as I'm sure you can appreciate.

[JerryL]

Hey TZ – not sure what part of Ohio you’re from but if you stop by the CHOPTAG plant swap this Sunday http://www.tomatoville.com/showthread.php?t=7405 I’ll have a Red Brandywine there for you. It’s the real deal. I got the seed from Carolyn.