Quote:
Originally Posted by Cornflower
Jumping back to the original post,
Does the catalog give any description of this? I am growing an Earliana that I got from an SSE seed rack; I am curious to know if this is the same tomato.
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The blurb in the SSE catalog says that Geirge Sparks, of NJ was the first to mention Earliana in 1900. And I've seen that Johnson and Stokes was the first to offer it.
But...... there are at least 50 synonyms for Earliana and similar varieties ranging from Alice Roosevelt, which I've grown, to Penn State Earliana, to Lange's Earliana to Cracker Jack to Moneymaker to Early Earliana and on and on and on.
As my source says" the forgoing names constitute only a partial list under which this variety and other similar early varieties are sold amd indicate their popularity. They also indicate the extent to which seedsmen are prone to use descriptive adjectives. "
That is, the seed business back then was very competitive and seed companies changed the names of varieties to indicate they had something special, something unique.
In the various yearbooks differetly named Earliana's have been listed and SSE itself lists one called Earliana, Sparks Improved, seed source MO BR E, who is someone that Craig and I both know.
So perhaps the seeds SSE is offering were those they got from Edmund many many years ago.