Red Tomatoes/large tomatoes

[carolyn137]

I thought that all "pink" tomatoes like Brandywine, Eva Purple Ball, were referred to as purples until the "true" purples came around like Black Krim, Purple Russian, and Cherokee Purple. Everyone had to shift gears and start calling pinks pinks and purples purples (or even black).


Purple was used to describe pinks mainly in the years before about 1900. Since then it's been mostly pink as a description with some escapees form that language as In Eva Purple Ball, Aunt Ginny's Purple, etc., and none of them are purple and none of them are pre-1900 varieties.

I know of only TWO varieties that I could describe as really purple, one is Purple Calabash and the other is Noir des Cosebeauf. The latter is one of the most beautiful varieties I've ever grown, but the taste, the taste, actually I can't abide either of those two.

I describe the so called blacks as pink/blacks, as in Black from Tula, Cherokee Purple, and the like, and red/blacks as in Black Krim, Huge Black, Black, and friends.