I have a Brandywine tomato plant, and have so far harvested four tomatoes from it. Two of them are as I would expect them - deep rosy pink when ripe, and with a rippled appearance, like a pumpkin (not smooth, is what I'm trying to say). But the other two I've picked have ripened to a real "classic" tomato red, and have a round, smooth shape. Is this normal to get such variation from a single plant? The seed came from my parents, who grew them and saved the seed from last year.
My first thought was that this might be a case of cross-pollination... it would have happened to your parent's plants, resulting in hybrid seeds that were not quite the same as the ones they originally planted, resulting in fruit, not exactly like you expected. see this link: http://faq.gardenweb.com/faq/lists/tomato/2005025852004159.html An excerpt: "If tomato varieties are planted in close proximity, pollen from one variety can land on the female part of a blossom, the stigma, of a different variety and lead to some or all hybrid seeds being formed in that fruit. This is commonly referred to as a "cross-pollination" or simply as a "cross." When cross-pollination occurs, the fruit will look perfectly normal in the current season; however, the resulting seeds carry genes from each parent and will produce varying progeny in subsequent generations" However, now that I think about it... wouldn't the whole plant have the same, but unexpected shape? I'm not sure you'd get different looking fruit on the same plant. Not very helpful at this point..... just throwing the idea of cross-pollination out there...... but not certain at this point if this is the answer. Perhaps someone with more of a genetics background can help here?
