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Old July 2, 2015   #20
FLRedHeart
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Join Date: Aug 2014
Location: FL 8b/9a
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Quote:
Originally Posted by stevenkh1 View Post
I've read the links you provided (thank you) and the Tatiana & Mike/Victory state the Di Giorgi Acme appears to be a different tomato from Livingston's Acme.
I agree. It is much, much larger too. There is nothing about de Giorgi that suggests it would be true except a name. I think if you selected Livingston's Beauty could be selected for smaller size and color and you would have the closest thing to Acme possible and that is the sort of thing people like Victory could sell with the explanation.

From, "Livingston and the Tomato", written in 1892, when Acme was right in the middle of its cycle and before earlier tomatoes were commercialized (Acme was one of the original smooth tomato varieties released to the world).

What is also interesting in Livingstons's description he emphasizes how genetically true the variety was specifically for his Acme seed indicating there were issues with purity for knockoffs already mounting. Elsewhere in his book he disses those who would buy from other seed companies due to the tendency to provide crossed seed (LOL, that would include Di Giorgi and Buist's Garden Seeds, the latter being the Philadelphia knockoff of Acme that White purchased ca. 1900 and got his "Washington's"):

Several varieties of a purple color had gone upon or markets, such as Feje and the Perfected, with some others. They produced somewhat after their kinds, but always required a liberal culling out of inferior specimens.
Yet many gardeners especially in the Western States, became partial to a purple-colored tomato:and this taste prevails. As my Paragon was Red, and too late for early, and as I wished to try again my method which I had discovered the Paragon, I set about to discover a purple tomato.

I selected from a field of growing tomatoes, as before, a plant which bore small, uniform, early tomatoes and which had its own peculiarly marked characteristics; such as recommended it to my judgement as being the tomato to meet the demands of the trade at the time. I saved the seeds carefully, cultivated it up in a few years, and introduced it in 1875 as a perfectly new and distinct variety, under the name "The Acme Tomato". It is lighter in foliage than the Paragon and much earlier. In fact it is the earliest of the uniformly smooth varieties to the present time.


.... ....

It is of a bright purple color, very tender, and fine fleshed. It is specially grown for home uses but also a good general purpose tomato.
Many prefer it above all others. In fertility foliage, growth and earliness, smoothness, size and color its distinct type is clearly all it was 17 years ago.
In 1890 I grew some plants to test this matter, from stock seed of 1880--ten years old; and the result showed them to be exactly what what they had been 10 years before, viz., distinct and true to kind. They are, as stockmen would say, "thoroughbred;" and, at least under out cultivation, show no disposition to run out.
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