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Old April 14, 2011   #5
carolyn137
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Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Upstate NY, zone 4b/5a
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Originally Posted by OneoftheEarls View Post
Yes, Carolyn, I have seen your explanation about Flame but never a claim that Virginia Sweets is Big Rainbow and/or Striped German...etc.

He is aware of SSE as he discusses it in his book.
Earl, aside from Flame, as I said above one can distinguish Big Rainbow and Striped German and Virginia Sweets according to when they were first listed in the SSE YEarbook and by whom and when.

He may be aware of SSE but is he an SSE member so he can view the YEarbooks online and get the backgrounds ASAP or has his own copies of the Yearbooks? I know he's not a listed member but could be an unlisted one but if that were true he'd still have access to the information about varieties.

I would assume, but don't know b/c I didn't check, that Tania has such information at her website.

No one can ID a variety without that information since so many of the gold/red bicolors look the same at maturity. The only one I know that is a bit different is Mary Reynolds since the seconday exterior color goes all the way to the top and when full ripe the fruits look almost red. And of course there's a few PL bicolors thrown in as well.

Other than the kind of background info that's needed, that I mentioned above to distinguish one variety from another, the only other way is with DNA sequencing and I don't see that happening anytime in the future.

Of the ones you mention above the only ones I remember without checking are Big Rainbow which was introduced many years ago by Dorothy Beisweger of MN and she was the source of my initial seeds and so noted in my book. I also had to do some background checks on Hillbilly. b'c I was wrongly credited with the PL version of it in the SSE public catalog a few years back and gave SSE the name of the correct person on that one.

As I recall, and just checked, Virginia Sweets was first offered by SSE itself in the 2000 Yearbook and has an accession number, so that one was sent directly to SSE and not first listed by an SSE member as does happen from time to time in which case there's usually no background information. I could dig out my 2000 Yearbook and see who donated it if SSE noted that but that wouldn't help. It was Neil L who first got it from SSE directly from that SSE 2000 liting and brought it forward and listed it in the YEarbook.

Neil has a special interest in gold/red bicolors and I remember one time going thru all my old seeds to find the variety Indian Reservation for him b/c he just had to have it.

Yes, I know who Derek Fell is, as a garden writer from PA who is usually published by Rodale Press.

Edited to add as I prepare to go back to bed, if he knew what the variety Flame really was he wouldn't be equating it with the others, so I doubt that he did much background checking before making the claims that he has and knowing Rodale Press as I do I doubt that anyone editing that book would be doing much fact checking.
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