Palestinian tomato - SSE info from the 1980s needed

[Tania]

Dear folks,

I need to dig into the background of the Palestinian tomato, that is currently listed at SSE by Neil Lockhart, myself (seeds from Neil), and Alan Kapuler.

Could anyone who has access to 1985-1988 Yearbooks look it up and see when it was first offered and what was the background given in the first listing?

It would mean a lot to me! Please help...

[carolyn137]

Tania, I think you know that your question is probably directed at me b'c although Craig also has all the Yearbooks he normally doesn't answer such questions.

Now take the 1985 Yearbook as an example, where I just looked. SSE offerings are arranged by STATE and if you don't know which state to look in b/c you don't know who originally offered it you have to look at ALL the states. And within a state listings are by SSE code, as in NY MA C and then listings for that person for ALL the person is listing from eggplent to squash to watermelons, etc., is listed.

So I'm not up for a diligent search thru the 1985 Yearbook b'c it would take a very long time to search thru all the states.

And the same would be true for the 1986 and 1987 Yearbooks. And I can't put my hands on either of those right now and would have to wait until Freda is here to search for me.

I did read the 1988, where listings are now by category and with the tomatoes, by color, and can report the following:


IN the 1988 SSE YEarbook there is one entry for Palestinian by OH RI N and the only information given is:

100 days, indeterminate, same as Paste but 14 oz fruits.

The variety Paste follows that and one person says an oblong paste, another says 8-10 oz fruits with no shape mentioned and cites OH RI N ( see above for Palestinian) as the seed source.

OH RI N also lists Paste and says red, meaty 9 oz fruits, long keeper and indet.

Just two years later in 1990 Calvin Waite is saying small ox heart shaped fruits 2-4 oz to smooth round 4-6 oz fruits. His source was WI EA T from 1987. and WI EA T is also listing it and per normal for him simply says 2.75 inches in diameter. Sigh,

By 1994 only one person is listing it and says...huge fruits shaped like a persimmon, sort of triangular, nice flavor and meaty....and gives no seed source.

By 1996, which is one of my favorite YEarbooks along with the 1994 there is again one listing from OH DE M who says nothing about shape but says one of the earliest of large fruited varieties and says OS OH RI N, which goes along with what I found in the 1988 Yearbook.

By 1998 things get even more interesting.

Darrel Kellogg lists it and says 1 to 1.5 # hearts and gives Neil Lockhart, 97, as his seed source,


Neil also lists it and says 1-1.5 hearts and cites CV To2 as his source. That may be Totally Tomatoes, I'm not sure.

So there seems to be a big change here from what the Rini's reported back in 1988. Did it change going thru TT?

In the current Yearbook there's your listing with large hearts and then as you know one by OR KA A saying large hearts and then giving a lineage that I've not seen before saying, an Amish and Egyptian heritage, whatever that might mean if the variety had been stable all those years, and then saying from Peace Seeds ( the apparent source for this listing) who apparently got it from the Rini's in the early 90's and saying it was from Palestine, Ohio.

So did it change going thru Peace Seeds?

But the Rini's in their 1988 lisiting never gave any of that background information at all, just saying it was a larger version of the variety back then just called PASTE.

Perhaps Alan Kapuler at Peace Seeds got more information from the Rini's when he requested the variety Palestinian.

Below is the current listing from Peace Seeds:

Palestinian heirloom with large irregular fruits,1/2-2# on indet vines;exceptionally delicious flavor and a family favorite;from Nick and Alice Rini in the Seed Saver's Exchange 1986.

Which harkens back to the RIni's 1988 description which just said 14 oz fruits and nothing more as I noted above.

That's about the best I can do for now and it seems like this variety has morphed thru time and is not what was reported early on as I noted above.

Edited to say that I hadn't realized that it was Alan Kapuler who was listing it b'c he seldom lists much in the Yearbooks.

So maybe you should try to confirm the heritage given which perhaps he got from the Rini's but to me right now this isn't making much sense in terms of the Amish and Egyptian heritage, nor the current so called Palestinian descriptions as opposed to what the Rini's themselves listed back in 1988, which presumably would not be different from what they listed in 1986.

[Tania]

Carolyn,

I think Will Bonsall may be the one who listed it in the early 1980s. Will it help to look it up by a state (ME)?

The story is getting more and more mysterious...

I can speculate that Alan Kapuler may have added 'Egyptian' origin assuming it may have come from the Palestina area. Amish origin may have been assumed by him if this variety came from Rob Gee who distributed the seed in the 1980s as a 'German' paste variety. ANyway, I am not going to speculate more until someone helps me to extract the 1980s SSE listings by Will...

THANK YOU Carolyn!

[Tania]

Carolyn,

Do you know if Rini was from Palestine, Ohio?

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by Tania

Carolyn,

I think Will Bonsall may be the one who listed it in the early 1980s. Will it help to look it up by a state (ME)?

The story is getting more and more mysterious...

I can speculate that Alan Kapuler may have added 'Egyptian' origin assuming it may have come from the Palestina area. Amish origin may have been assumed by him if this variety came from Rob Gee who distributed the seed in the 1980s as a 'German' paste variety. ANyway, I am not going to speculate more until someone helps me to extract the 1980s SSE listings by Will...

THANK YOU Carolyn!

The Rini's were not from Palestine OH, they were from Hartville, OH.

Tania, when and if Freda can locate my other earlier SSE Yearbooks, and I don't know when that will be, if I have the energy and time, what specifically do you want me to look for?

I can tell you that in 1985 Bonsall did not list a German Paste but did list Paste and did not list Palestinian,

I can tell you that in 1985 the Rini's listed a Pakastani, and said same as Paste but 14 oz, listed Paste as a 9 oz fruit and listed no other reds.

Is Pakastani the real name for Palestinian? Who knows at this point but it is interesting. Names do get mixed up you know.

[Tania]

Carolyn,

This is a great amount of info I could not have gotten without you! You are wonderful .

This is probably enough for now, as I was truly 'shooting in a dark' trying to find the roots of the Palestinian.

I obtained the seed from Neil in 2006, thinking (erroneously) that it may have some 'Palestinian' roots (not Ohio Palestine).

Neil listed his Palestinian as being very different from the 'original' descriptions that you quoted above. Obviously something happened with this variety along the way, and it is hard to tell what specifically happened. Unless, of course, there were two different tomato var. called 'Palestinian' .

[dice]

This kind of thing can easily go two ways:

Someone from Palestine, Ohio (or East Palestine, Ohio) or
thereabouts has an old heirloom that they send to someone
without a name (says "the big paste", or something like that
on the seed packet). The person that receives it writes
"Palestine" down on their plant tag to remind themselves
of where they got it. Somehow, in subsequent trading,
"Palestine" (meaning "from Palestine, Ohio") is transformed
into "Palestinian", perhaps as a joke (look at where Palestine
and East Palestine are located on a map of Ohio), perhaps
simply as a result of someone remembering it wrong. After that
numerous people get the (mistaken) impression that the cultivar
is from the Middle East, and the confusion of its origins just snowballs from there.

The other way is that there actually was a cultivar that someone
collected in Palestine in the Middle East, brought it home,
called it simply "Palestinian", grew it out, traded it, gave
seeds to friends, etc. It is eventually discovered by farmers and
gardeners around Palestine and/or East Palestine, Ohio, who
then more-or-less adopt it because it has the same name as
their home.

Kind of hard to say which was which here without a first
hand report from the person who first named it something
other than "the big paste".

[carolyn137]

Dice there are all sorts of theories that can be entertained, but if you reread what I posted above , you'll see that the original description of this variety changed a couple of times over the years so that what folks are getting now doesn't reflect what was originally described.

(I can tell you that in 1985 the Rini's listed a Pakastani, and said same as Paste but 14 oz, listed Paste as a 9 oz fruit and listed no other reds.)

This is of particular interest since the Rini's gave the 14 oz size in a description for Palestinian.

There is no way to definitively solve this situation b'c of all the time that's gone by, the changes in the variety over the years, and no way to document anything.

[dice]

you'll see that the original description of this variety changed a couple of times over the years

I did see that, too, but it seemed to me that how the
"14 oz oblong paste" became an oxheart was a
different mystery from how the name and reported
origins changed over the years, one perhaps even
harder to guess. Did it simply throw an oxheart one
year, which somehow became the source of the saved
seeds? Was it a seed mixup? Did someone decide to
improve it (in their humble opinion)? Does anyone
still grow the original 14 oz oblong paste?

[amideutch]

Had a slow day today so I did a little search on "Palestinian".
In the 2008 yearbook Neil Lockhart and Bill Minkey have it listed in the Pink section. Neil though lists it as a red and Bill has it as a pink. Both are hearts.
Tanya and Alan Kapuler have it listed in the Red section as a Red Heart.

This is Nichols Garden's discription.

Red, 14 oz oxheart type fruits. Delicious, lightly seeded, the favorite tomato of the Kapuler family. Alan Kapuler, PhD, of Peace Seeds says this is a must offer and provided our seed. It is an heirloom. I'm researching. Will Bonsall of the Scatterseed Project says it was first offerred in the 1988 SSE directory by a gentleman from East Palestine, Ohio, hence the name. Open pollinated. 85 days. Indeterminate.




Go figure. Ami

[carolyn137]

Red, 14 oz oxheart type fruits. Delicious, lightly seeded, the favorite tomato of the Kapuler family. Alan Kapuler, PhD, of Peace Seeds says this is a must offer and provided our seed. It is an heirloom. I'm researching. Will Bonsall of the Scatterseed Project says it was first offerred in the 1988 SSE directory by a gentleman from East Palestine, Ohio, hence the name. Open pollinated. 85 days. Indeterminate.

****

Ami, I'm sitting here with the 1986 SSE Yearbook, not the 1988, in my lap and Palestinian is offered, and not by someone from East Palestine, OH, but by OH RI N, our friend from above posts, and it says:

Palestinian: 100 days, indet, same as Paste but 14 oz, and above I copied the blurb for Paste. OH RI N says 9 oz for Paste as I also mentioned above.

So at the same time that Palestinian is listed in the 1986 Yearbook by the Rini's there were no OH listed members who were from East Palestine, OH, as determined by my looking at the directory in the front of the 1996 Yearbook.

As I wrote above, the Rini's were from Hartville, OH.
So there you go.

So the history that Nichols Seeds apparently got from Kapuler is not correct as far as I can tell by looking directly at the older SSE Yearbooks.

And I do think the Rini's just made a simple error in listing Pakastani rather than Palestinian. Those kinds of mistakes are known to be made. Someone is sitting there making out the forms for SSE listings and goes from memory and maybe memory isn't working well that day.

Freda did come yesterday and I was going to ask her to find some other older Yearbooks but at this point I agree with Tania that it really isn't going to prove anything and that the current Palestinian is not what it was originally.

Besides, when Freda walked in yesterday and showed me the bullseye lesion on her arm with the surrounding redness I just gasped. Awful looking, and yes, she has Lyme Disease. And some nasty flu-like symptoms to go with it. So she refilled the bird feeders and left.

She has the same Primary doc that I do and Dan said it's been a terrible year so far for tick bites and Lyme Disease. The winter was not that cold, which usually keeps the tick population down, but the numbers have been increasing lately anyway based on his patient population and local newspaper articles as well.

[VGary]

I grew the Palestinian Tomato in 2002. A friend found seedlings at a roadside stand several countys distant and surprised me with it. It was an ind. pink with variable/heart shape and few seed. It did not have a paste shape to it from my observations. I have not grown it since. I had too many other varieties I wanted to grow.
Gary

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by VGary

I grew the Palestinian Tomato in 2002. A friend found seedlings at a roadside stand several countys distant and surprised me with it. It was an ind. pink with variable/heart shape and few seed. It did not have a paste shape to it from my observations. I have not grown it since. I had too many other varieties I wanted to grow.
Gary

Gary, even in the current 2008 SSE Yearbook both Neil Lockhart and Bill Minkey are listing it as a pink heart, while Tania and Alan Kapuler are listing it as a red heart.

But the original Palestinian was listed as a red and no heart shape was noted.

[amideutch]

Carolyn, make sure Freda gets here "Lyme" treated pronto. As you know that is a very serious disease and should be dealt with immediately.
The point of my earlier post is that nobody is on the same sheet of music concerning this variety. There are few people besides yourself with the knowledge to sort these things out. It's good that Tanya is trying to get her data base as accurate as possible concerning the history of each cultivar. Ami

[Tania]

Carolyn,

I believe Neil lists it as a red heart, but his listing was erroneously put into PINK section. My seeds were from Neil, and it is certainly red, not pink.