yellow prue

[Darwin_NT]

I have just picked my third Prue and they where all yellow, i thought they where supposed to be a red or pink colour.
Is this normal for Prue.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by Darwin_NT

I have just picked my third Prue and they where all yellow, i thought they where supposed to be a red or pink colour.
Is this normal for Prue.

Prue is definitely red and the person with whom this variety originated, Tom G, posts here at Tville as well.

What was your seed source? And what was the shape(s) of your yellow Prue fruits and how many plants did you plant out and did all of them give you yellow fruits?

[tjg911]

very curious! as carolyn said prue is not yellow.

tom (g)

[Darwin_NT]

HI i got the seeds from fellow Aussie and tomatoville member Raymondo. i just checked to see if i grew these last year and it turns out i did, as i have seeds saved from 2009, so the plants i have growing now are from those saved 09 seeds.
I have three plants growing of which two have ripe fruit at this stage, one with yellow fruit and the 2nd with red fruit and yet to see what colour the 3rd will be.
this is what triggered the curiosity, the fruit on all are heart shaped and the leaves are ribbed or jagged on the edge.

The only other yellow i grew last year was potato leafed yellow brandywine.
Interestingly these three Prue plants are growing in between yellow brandywine and Kosovo at the moment.

[tjg911]

how old are the plants? as prue grows to 2' and taller it is a wispy charlie brown christmas tree plant - sparse foliage and very droopy looking that is regular not potato leafed. it always looks dried out/thirsty like it needs water. fruits are wider at the top tapering to a point or sometimes a pronounced nipple. i would not call them heart shaped. some are bomb shaped. they are variable on the same plant some could be 5 oz and some a pound tho average is 7-10 oz. does the plant with yellow fruit look like this description?

see pictures at http://tatianastomatobase.com/wiki/Prue

i doubt yellow brandywine has these characteristics. i wonder if you got a seed in there from a different variety?

tom

[Darwin_NT]

these are Prue and have the characteristics, and are from saved Prue seed from last year. they have obviously done a natural cross with yellow brandywine which was the only yellow tomato i grew last year. they are very nice tasting and taste very much the same as the yellow brandywine but a bit sweeter.
Im yet to taste any of the red one yet.
i have 10 photos but I'm having trouble downloading them.
Ill keep trying with the photos, any tips appreciated.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by Darwin_NT

these are Prue and have the characteristics, and are from saved Prue seed from last year. they have obviously done a natural cross with yellow brandywine which was the only yellow tomato i grew last year. they are very nice tasting and taste very much the same as the yellow brandywine but a bit sweeter.
Im yet to taste any of the red one yet.
i have 10 photos but I'm having trouble downloading them.
Ill keep trying with the photos, any tips appreciated.

Darwin, if a yellow fruited variety such as Yellow Brandywine crossed with Prue then the saved seeds from what you grew last year that could have crossed, would be Red, since red is dominant to yellow.

You have three plants, two with yellow fruits and one with red.

Could you please describe what your Prue looked like last year in terms of fruit shapes ? Have you looked at any pictures of Prue? And I'm assuming that your Prue last year was red.

http://tatianastomatobase.com/wiki/Prue

Above is a link to Tania's tomato data base page about Prue, where you'll see several folks commenting about variable shapes, some including hearts, but in general different shaped fruits. And there are several pictures there showing those variable shapes.

And I wanted to show those since you say you're getting all hearts, I guess on your red and yellow fruited plants as well.

How many Prue fruits from last year did you save seeds from?

I was going to discuss the possibility of other varieties you grew last year that might have crossed with the fruit or fruits you saved seeds from last year, but if they were pink, yellow, orange, white or another red the cross pollinated seeds would still be red.

Finally, are all fruits on both the red and yellow fruited plants hearts as you've, I think said.

Right now I'm a bit stumpted on where your yellow fruited plants could have originated from, unless there was some mix-up when you grew your seedlings THIS year. But if that were true, what other varieties are you growing this year that were in the yellow/gold/orange family of colors?

[tjg911]

i never posted a picture but there are icons to insert a htpp address, insert a picture. run your cusor over the icons on line 2, the 11th is insert a link, 14 th is insert image.

tom

[maf]

Originally Posted by Darwin_NT

t
i have 10 photos but I'm having trouble downloading them.
Ill keep trying with the photos, any tips appreciated.

See here for more information: How to post photos/images

[korney19]

My Prue seeds didn't germinate.

[tjg911]

Originally Posted by korney19

My Prue seeds didn't germinate.

mark,

if you are out of prue seed email me and i'll send you some.

tom

[tjg911]

darwin_nt,

do you have any more info on this or have you decided to discontinue the topic?

my interest in this is because i introduced prue to carolynn and craig for i think it was the 2003 growing season. i've been growing prue for 25+ years and i have never seen it cross with any tomato. if you have something new then i'm curious to hear about it.

tom

[Darwin_NT]

sorry people I'm not to good with this computer stuff, my photos were to large so a mate downsized them, i have no idea how but it seems to have down loaded the photos.

In the last two photos on the top left is one yellow brandywine just for comparison.

the third plant that's growing is a red so out of the three plants only one is yellow.

The reason only one red tomato is in the photos is that's all that was ripe at the time. so the yellows seem to have ripened quicker than the reds.

[carolyn137]

I went back to the first few posts to confirm that you had grown Prue last year and what you planted out this year was from those saved seeds from your red fruited plants last year.

Seeds were saved from red fruits. Red is dominant to yellow, so any X pollination with a yellow would give F1 red fruits this year. Usually most ovules in a tomato ovary self pollenize and true red seeds are produced.

Tom would be the best one to comment but I see the same kind of variable fruit shapes with the yellows that I would expect with the reds.

So what might be going on? One suggestion is a somatic mutation. A plant of Green Gage, which has yellow fruits, had one branch that had all red fruits of the same shape. That's the result of a somatic mutation. The variety Yellow Riesentraube arose b'c one fruit on a plant with all red fruits was yellow. That's a somatic mutation. My plant of Dix Doight de Naples had one branch that all red fruit, same color as expected, but the fruit shape was totally different. That's a somatic mutation.

If this was a somatic mutation that mutation would have had to occur early in the growth of the plant such that all fruits were yellow.

Somatic mutation are rare, I've seen only two in my tomato patch ever, and while it's possible, I've never read about a somatic mutation that affected ALL fruits on a plant although it's theoretically possible.

I'd suggest saving seed from several of the yellow fruits and growing out some plants next your season and/or making available to those who wanted those seeds to grow for our next season.

if it's a somatic mutation, they are permanent and heritable so all plants should give yellow fruits from those saved seeds, unless there's been any X pollination going on this growing season for you.

Tom, what do you think; it's your tomato kid we're talking about here?

[tjg911]

I looked at all 8 photos. They are variable shaped and look like Prue. The foliage in photos #1, 2 and 6 is not easy to see if it has the twisted droopy appearance of Prue and the plants appear to be much fuller than my plants which are like a Charley Brown Christmas tree. In my garden I typically have fruits that are shaped more like photo #4, distinctly longer than wider at the top and they have a nipple or a sharp point at the base. This shape is what I get probably 90%+ of the time. I sometimes have a bomb shaped fruit shown in photo #3 like the one on the scale and the one that is ½ green but this is less common in fact this year I don't think I have seen one shaped like that. I sometimes have the lateral cracking (iirc that's the term for the crack going from top towards bottom) as shown in photo #3 on the red and ½ green tomatoes. The weight is what I guess mine often are, I don't have a scale but I say they weigh around 5-9 oz and 144 grams is 5 oz. In photo #5 the non red fruits have a lot of open space inside them and my red fruits never have this appearance unless I pick them in early to mid October when they are not ripening properly due to cold nights and short cool days. In photo #6 I assume you placed the red fruit at the base of the plant vs it fell from this plant? To me the color of these tomatoes is orange as in photos #6 and 7, whereas photos #2, 5 and 8 look yellow but maybe these are not fully ripened or due to the lighting?


When Carolyn said in post #7 “Darwin, if a yellow fruited variety such as Yellow Brandywine crossed with Prue then the saved seeds from what you grew last year that could have crossed, would be Red, since red is dominant to yellow.” and in post #14 “Seeds were saved from red fruits. Red is dominant to yellow, so any X pollination with a yellow would give F1 red fruits this year. Usually most ovules in a tomato ovary self pollenize and true red seeds are produced.”, I was sure there was a mix up but the fruits do look like Prue. I know nothing about genetics so I have a complete lack of knowledge about how these things happen.

At this point, I'd ask Carolyn what to do as in growing the seeds from the non red fruits to see what happens or what to expect.

Tom