Re so called 'Ethiopian' black varieties originated in Ukraine - my other speculation is that these could indeed be some black tomatoes originated in Russia, and called 'Efiop', or 'Ethiopian' by people who associated black color with the skin color of etihopian people. Similar story may apply to the well known Paul Robeson tomato... or 'Negritenok' tomato.
What do you think?
Tania, the idea that it was named Ethiopian b/c the majority of the people there are black has been raised and discussed before. But why Ethiopia when the peoples of many other countries are also dark skinned?
And while I've got both you and Andrey here I wanted to share with you that I've been reading thru my Yearbook and have finished the orange/yellow and pink/purple sections so far and what amuses me a bit is that you and Andrey are at the top of all varieties you listed b'c BC ( British Columbia) and BELR ( Belarus) are usually first, and when you two list the same variety you often spell that variety differently.
Not a huge change but yet differently.
Two observations so far, and I'll probably post this in the SSE thread anyway, but first, the errors I saw are getting more and more numerous, no, I'm not necessarily talking about the listings of either of you, and second, so many histories are being lost.
For many varieties you'll see NY MA C, for instance, but there are many more where the original histories I posted when I was listing those varieties has totally disappeared.
A few of the SSE members, such as Bill Minkey, try to keep the histories going, but many don't, and I feel badly when I read thru and see that many that I introduced, which is several hundreds of new ones, the histories are gone.