Quote:
Originally Posted by carolyn137
If you read any historyies of tomatoes in general you'll find that until about the late-1850's they had lumpy bumpy surfaces to one degree or another; they weren't smooth. In Andrew F Smith's book he also shows paintings of tomatoes done pre-1800 and you can see how mishapen they were.
It's generally agreed that the first smooth tomato was the variety Trophy which was first made available in 1860 here in the US. Trophy crossed the Atlantic and was renamed I think in France to Grosse Lisse, which is still grown in Australia, but it's Trophy. Many of the first US smooth varieties also crossed the Atlantic to England,Europe, etc.
Carolyn
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Hi Carolyn,
I ran across this in my reading which I thought you'd find interesting.
Page 68: "Direction of Variation.* - The Cherry tomato is undoubtedly the original tomato, from which have come all the varieties of our garden, with the exception of the currant, which represents a distinct species. One of the first variations from the primitive type is the augmentation of cells in the fruit, followed by a tendency to irregularity in shape. Later, the flowers become monstrous by the production of an abnormal number of parts. In the synopsis of varieties on a succeeding page, the varieties are arranged in the order of their supposed development, so far as possible in a lineal classification. The true development of the leading sorts is better represented in the following diagram, on page 69. (see attached).
Also, I've attached another image from the book of what the State of Michigan considered the leading tomato varieties in 1887.
Steve