Crosses with wispy leafed types

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by dice

The question that occurs to me is whether there is a "droopy"
gene, which would be associated with the growth habit of
cultivars like Prue?

I think it's a matter of adjectives.

Many say droopy when many others will say wilty and in most cases they're describing the same foliage trait.

[frogsleap farm]

Originally Posted by dice

The question that occurs to me is whether there is a "droopy"
gene, which would be associated with the growth habit of
cultivars like Prue?

That's the exact question I started with. I've got several "droopy", "wispy", etc., heart and paste types this year and have had trouble finding references on the inheritance of the trait and how closely linked the gene(s) are to fruit shape/type. I'll make some crosses to help sort it out - I just thought this would have been well established.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by frogsleap farm

That's the exact question I started with. I've got several "droopy", "wispy", etc., heart and paste types this year and have had trouble finding references on the inheritance of the trait and how closely linked the gene(s) are to fruit shape/type. I'll make some crosses to help sort it out - I just thought this would have been well established.

FL, see the post I did right before yours. I do think it's a matter of adjectives, but that doesn't answer the question on droopy/wispy and fruit shapes, etc. with regard to possible genes.

Another association I've made in the past refers to a condition I called CRUD. An explanation is in order here.

In the early 90's I noticed that many of my hearts developed brown leaf edges and I'd take off as many of the affected leaves as i could leaving tomato stalks, if you will, and I was stumped b'c once they got set out in the good outdoors that affliction went away and the plants were fine.

I contacted Tom Zitter at Cornell at the advice of the then Director of the Cornell Coop Ext in my area and he told me he knew what I was talking about and thought it was an aberrant type of Early Blight but they hadn't been able to prove it conclusively and I never heard anything more about it but folks since them have noticed CRUD on mainly their heart varieties and yes, some others as well, such as Kellogg's Breakfast.

He's also the one who asked if I'd be interested in doing Early Blight challenges on some of my plants b'c at the time only he and Randy Gardner were working on that, but I politely declined.

What's my point?

my point is that one year in one of my data books I listed all of the heart varieties I was growing that year and noted which were wispy/droopy and which weren't and there was a high correlation between wispy/droopy and CRUD but not with those heart varieties that didn't have wispy/droopy foliage. I also listed the other non-heart varieties that developed CRUD.

The questions being, what's the genetics of hearts as related to wispy/droopy, CRUD and low seed viability? As in......any linkage.

And what a nice memory that was b'c years ago I started all my plants and transferred them to a falling down greenhouse at the old farm where birch trees were growing up through the areas where no sash were and the bench was rotted wood in many places, and I'd sit in there for hours separating varieties and putting individual labels on them and the filtered sunlight was great, it was so peacful and quiet and my mother's adopted cat Bootsie would be with me there hour after hour.

Oh to go back to those times, that place, that sunny solitude.

[gflynn]

Dice,

I would have the same question if it were just Prue, but after a cross with potato leaf type that lead to a Clearly Droopy potato leaf I am convince there is some genetic trait or traits involved. I will get a pic and post it.

Greg

[frogsleap farm]

Originally Posted by gflynn

Dice,

I would have the same question if it were just Prue, but after a cross with potato leaf type that lead to a Clearly Droopy potato leaf I am convince there is some genetic trait or traits involved. I will get a pic and post it.

Greg

Greg - I am assuming you got PL/droopy segregates in the F2. What did the F1 plant look like?

[TZ-OH6]

Tom Wagner should know. His Green Sausage/Green Sleaves is prostrate it is so wispy,... thin leaves, thin vines etc. I think he called it bird's nest growth. I grew out crosses between Lime Green Salad and Green Sausage last year and the elongate shape followed the wispy foliage in the F1 (dominant) and F2 even with the dwarfs.

[gflynn]

Frog's Leap,

The leaves are potato leaf but they seem to grow in on them selves radically when they are new but then continue to point down after they are half or 3/4 size. I will try and get a pic tonight.

Greg

[dice]

Tom Wagner mentioned a trait he called "narrow leaf".
(I wonder if he means wispy, droopy foliage like many hearts
have or what some call "carrot leaf", like Silvery Fir Tree.)

I think what we are discussing here is mostly "type 3" on this
page:
http://www.tomatoland.net/forums/viewtopic.php?p=218

These pictures of Kosovo from Tania's TOMATObase kind
of show it:
http://tatianastomatobase.com/wiki/Kosovo

Looking at the Kosovo pictures, it looks like a characteristic
of the stems, as otherwise the leaves look fairly normal
for a regular leaf plant. That is consistent with what
I have seen, which is why I called it "droopy leaf".
That would fit with a "wispy" potato leaf plant. The leaves
do not seem to "reach for the sky" nearly as much as
plants that do not have this characteristic. The stem of
the rachis bends down.

[travis]

With the Wessel's Purple Pride (originating from a cross of Cherokee Purple x Green Sausage) it's not so much a narrow leaf issue as droopy leaf ribs. The leaflets themselves are not extremely narrow by comparison to other regular leaf varieties. They are narrower than Cherokee Purple for sure. But the leaf ribs are thin and droopy and continue to give the plant a loosely mounded appearance regardless of how tall it gets in the cage and regardless of soil moisture conditions that support all the other varieties in upright and unwilted condition. The stems and side shoots also have a flimsy appearance and the leaves themselves kind of droop downward from the ribs. The entire plant has a healthy, deep green appearance though. All pretty much the same as Dice describes in his last paragraph, but definitely I don't see it as wispy. Just droopy.

[carolyn137]

I hesitated posting this but then said, what the heck.

I've grown a boatload of PL varieties, possibly hundreds, b'c I happen to like them and to date I've never seen what some of you are calling a droopy plant habit. And for me droopy does not equal wispy which I describe as narrow highly serrated leaves, which may droop as well, or not.

And I'm talking about known named PL varieties. So I can't really speak to the cross above where Green Sausage was crossed with the Wessel one, but wouldn't you think that some of our known PL's initially occurred via a cross with a droopy/wilty, whatever? And maybe whoever made selecttions selected away from that kind of foliage trait. No way to know.

[frogsleap farm]

I have eight or so "wispy" varieties planted this year (hearts and elongated plums), but they definitely vary in how narrow the leaves are and degree of the droopy/wilt phenotype. At one end of the spectrum is Wes (wider leaves, less droopy), and at the other is Teton de Venus (heart and in photo) and Cassady's Folly (elongated plum). I'm starting to buy into a more complex genetic control theory where narrow leaf, droopy and fruit shape are independent genes, though probably linked. The second photo is a side by side of Rinaldo (droopy elongated heart) and Earl's Faux x BTD F1 (normal leaf type)