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Not Your Garden-Variety Garden Tomatoes
March 30, 2009 | 3
Goldman collected Sara's Galapagos, a type of currant tomato, on a trip to Santa Cruz Island in 2002.
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The Schimmeig Stoo (top), Green Zebra (middle), and Casady's Folly (bottom) were first introduced by Kansas breeder Thomas P. Wagner in the 1980s.
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A group of plum tomatoes includes the elongated Jersey Devil on the upper left and the Opalka on the lower right. The SUN gene is responsible for much of a tomato's shape.
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Radiator Charlie's Mortgage Lifter, shown here with currant tomatoes, helped mechanic Marshall Cletis Byles -- aka Radiator Charlie -- pay off his $6000 mortgage on his home in 1940s West Virginia....[More]
Known as "Purple Smudge, Orange Fleshed," this rainbow tomato gets its purple color from anthocyanins, a pigment rare in cultivated tomatoes but common in their wild relatives and other fruits....[More]
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3 Comments
Add CommentGreetings, Brendan. I'm happy to see The Heirloom Tomato: From Garden to Table in Scientific American. I'd like to correct one error: The last image in the slide show, "Deep Purple," is incorrectly labeled. The image you've got is "Big Rainbow" which is a bicolor beefsteak named by seedsaver extraordinaire, Dorothy Beiswenger, of Crookston, Minnesota, in 1983.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAmy Goldman (author of The Heirloom Tomato)
Hello,Brendan. I am glad you put this slide show up to contrast your previous "case" against the Heirloom tomatoes! I know you must really, down deep, like Heirloom tomatoes, otherwise you would not have included the photo # 2 of the presentation showing the three tomato out of my breeding work: Schimmeig Stoo, Green Zebra, and Casady's Folly!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThanks for doing this feature, and thanks, Amy, for your lovely book on tomatoes!
Tom Wagner
The diversity argument is made even more interesting by the fact that a book on heirlooms shows lines that really aren't heirlooms.
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