Potato leaf vs regular leaf

[nancyruhl]

Comparison pictures of Purple Dog Creek fruit from potato leaf and regular leaf plants. Look and taste the same to me.

[WVTomatoMan]

>Tatianastomatobase clearly states regular leaf.
Purple Dog Creek is regular leaf. I guess I should go on to explain that Spud Raney and I are the original seed sources.

Perhaps you have some crossing going on?

Good luck.

Randy

p.s. You said you have several PDC PL plants, generally sports don't come out in bunches.

[JerryL]

I first obtained Granny Cantrell’s German Red from Gary Millwood in 2004. Below is the info he included. Seem to me that he named it based on the Kentucky Family description before he grew it. But as others have said it is a pink.

A Kentucky Family has shared a few Heirloom Tomato Seed with me which they have grown since 1945. They loved this tomato so much that it has been the only tomato they have grown all those years. They do not have a name for it but stated that it was a German Red. For record purposes, I am going to call it Granny Cantrell's German Red Tomato. I would like to send you 15 seed if you are willing to grow it and save seed for me to use with the Appalachian Heirloom Seed Conservancy group; we are organizing to preserve rare Heirloom Plants/Vegetables which have been grown over the years. These seed will be made available to members within the organization.

[WVTomatoMan]

nancyruhl,

I checked my seeds for Purple Dog Creek. I have the original pack of seeds from Spud from 2004 and I have seeds from my first grow out in 2005. I can share the 2005 seeds with you if you would like to do a grow out for comparison and verification. I am very familiar with PDC so you could send me seeds and I'll do the grow outs for comparison and verification. Note that you must keep the PL seeds separate from the RL seeds.

BTW, if you save seeds from your most representative PL plant and do a grow out, all of the plants must be PL or it is not a sport. Sports retain characteristics.

Another BTW, between me, Spud, and his customers we've grown hundreds of PDC plants and none of them were PL.

Good luck.

Randy

[Ken4230]

Originally Posted by WVTomatoMan

BTW, if you save seeds from your most representative PL plant and do a grow out, all of the plants must be PL or it is not a sport. Sports retain characteristics.
Randy

What would it be if only one or two were PL? Is a sport a stable new variety deserving of a different name?

This is the type of thread I have to read several times just to try to remember as much as I can.

Thanks, Randy
Ken

[WVTomatoMan]

> What would it be if only one or two were PL?
Crossed seed.

> Is a sport a stable new variety deserving of a different name?
Absolutely. It has been done throughout tomato history. One early example would be the sport Livingston used to create the Paragon. Another example would be the Beefsteak (note the big B). Beefsteak was also known as Red Ponderosa (and Crimson Cushion and a couple of other names). The original Ponderosa was pink fruited.


Randy

[nctomatoman]

I think this is a good discussion but a difficult one to get exactly right since there are varying opinions.

This is my view - a variety is a variety with a set of specific attributes - Cherokee Purple is a regular leaf, large fruited purple tomato. If someone gets any potato leaf seedlings, it is either from a mutation or a mix up or a few stray seed, since regular leaf is dominant and crossing wouldn't result in potato leaf (unless the mix up happened a generation previous and some recessive is showing). I've grown literally thousands of Cherokee Purple seedlings and it is always regular leaf.

Let's say a potato leaf seedling does show up that seems to have similarly colored fruit - I would much rather it be called something completely different than just "potato leaf Cherokee Purple", because to me it is a different variety.

Another example that illustrates how things can get confused is with a pink variety called Taps. When I got it there was a mix of PL and RL seedlings - not sure how - but it isn't inherently prone to "leaf flipping", because after a few years of selection, I can get 100% PL from seeds saved from fruit from the PL plant, and 100% RL from fruit grown on the RL plants.

I think there are four factors to the unexpected leaf shapes popping up - chance crossing, chance stray seed, a mistake of some sort during seed saving with labeling, or most rare, a mutation (sport). With so many more people now becoming involved with seed saving, and so many more potato leaf varieties being grown, it isn't surprising to me to see this happening.

What worries me the most is loss of integrity of a variety, or a variety's specific history.....so I strive to keep the exact characteristics of a particular variety (fruit color, size, shape, leaf shape) accurate.

[carolyn137]

A variety that is known to be RL shows up as PL.

What can one conclude?

Only if there's a single spontaneous mutation of ONE leaf form gene would everything about the variety be the same except for leaf form.

There are many other ways that an RL can become a PL that involves not crossing, but the specific kind of DNA mutation that occurs. A single spontanoues mutation in one gene is stable and heritable.

But there are other kinds of DNA mutations that include lopping out, repeats, inversions, and the like and in those cases MORE than a single gene be involved.

And if an RL becomes PL using one of those mechanisms above one can not conclude that all is the same except for leaf form.

The above refers to seed DNA mutations, but DNA mutation can also occur in the vegetative cell DNA and those are called Somatic mutations, soma means body, from the Greek.

I've been lucky to observe two somatic mutations, they aren't all that common.

One recent one was posted about here at Tville. The large red variety Casino had one branch with cherry tomatoes on it; that's called a Somatic mutation and seeds saved from those cherry tomatoes should also be stable, they were and the variety was called Casino Chips.

The two I saw were the variety Green Gage, which is yellow, where one branch had red fruits. The other one was Dix Doight de Naples where one branc had the same color red fruits of the original but were a completely different shape.

And just noting that it was me who sent seeds of Taps to Craig b'c the darn thing was driving me crazy. Save seeds from PL plants and get both PL and RL plants, save seeds from RL plants and get both PL and RL plants. Repeat the next season and get the same result.

I call it flip flop and it isn't the only variety that has shown that trait, but in this case Craig was able to stabilize it.

[WVTomatoMan]

A very interesting discussion indeed.

I'm not saying a mutation isn't possible, I'm just saying that I feel that it is fairly unlikely. However, admittedly this has piqued my curiosity and I would love to get some seeds to do a grow out to see if anything can be concluded.

When I look at the pictures of the fruit above a couple of things strike me. There is cracking and splitting with the PL fruit while the RL fruit is blemish free. I also notice that the locules look differently to me (and yes I realize the one fruit isn't fully ripe). I realize not much can be concluded from this, but am just pointing out a couple of things I noticed.

Randy

[nancyruhl]

Randy, I would love to send you seeds from both the RL and PL plants at the end of the season. I would also like to read your assessment after your growouts. I would also love to try growing out some of your saved seed next season
I do not feel that I mixed up the seed. Carolyn has taught me the importance of scrupulous techniques in seed saving, labeling, and planting. I planted quite a few seeds, intending to sell plants at a farmers market, which did not happen for a number of reasons. The seedlings were pretty well split in half for each leaf type.
I will also say that I have had a tremendous amount of fruit splitting this year on all my tomato varieties due to the intense heat and dry conditions.

[SharonRossy]

OMG! I am so dumb. Just posted a question about the differences between the two and then realized you had this thread going! That's what happens when your on too many forums!!! Most of this is way over my head!
Anyways, Nancy, I too have had a huge problem with splitting, especially my JBT and GZ. I'm now carefully watching Gold Medal which is my first year and hoping they make it.
Sharon

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by SharonRossy

OMG! I am so dumb. Just posted a question about the differences between the two and then realized you had this thread going! That's what happens when your on too many forums!!! Most of this is way over my head!
Anyways, Nancy, I too have had a huge problem with splitting, especially my JBT and GZ. I'm now carefully watching Gold Medal which is my first year and hoping they make it.
Sharon

Sharon, it's not way over you're head it's just part of the learning process since you're relatively new to growing heirloom varieties.

And before posting it's always good to do a search , at the top of the page, and if you had done so this thread would have popped up ASAP.

Sometimes when searching for other topics or varieties one needs to try different entry words, and also to try the two options of threads or posts, but there's a tremendous amount of info here at Tville in the back threads/posts, all there for those searching for information on a wide variety of topics.

I hope to get back to your thread here in the General Discussion area about the questions you posed in the Town Hall Forum, since I said they do belong here and not there, but probably not until later today or possibly tomorrow.

No hurry since you won't be sowing seeds until maybe 8 months hence.

[SharonRossy]

Thanks Carolyn, like growing tomatoes, learning to navigate around the forums is a process! You have such a lovely way of telling me to think first! LOL still working my way around threads and posts....
Sharon

[WVTomatoMan]

I just said the following to some one recently, but I think it bears repeating:

I pick the darndest things to get interested in, computers (I'm a computer programmer), music (I play and taught guitar), and tomatoes. With each of those you can spend your whole life learning and still not know everything.

I learned from this thread. I thought it was a good discussion with some good information - not that I supplied much of that myself.

Good luck. It's a fun journey.

Randy

Originally Posted by SharonRossy

OMG! I am so dumb. Just posted a question about the differences between the two and then realized you had this thread going! That's what happens when your on too many forums!!! Most of this is way over my head!
Anyways, Nancy, I too have had a huge problem with splitting, especially my JBT and GZ. I'm now carefully watching Gold Medal which is my first year and hoping they make it.
Sharon

[WVTomatoMan]

Carolyn,

I've been meaning to ask, but I keep forgetting. Do you happen to know if a mule (aka bull) plant would be considered a spontaneous mutation or a somatic mutation? Do you want me to guess?

I'm going to embarrass myself and go ahead and guess. My first guess would be spontaneous mutation. But, I have reservations with that because I suspect more than one gene might be involved. Therefore, I'm going to go with somatic mutation and that's my final answer.


Randy