Volunteer Variegated seedlings

[jayb]

A few weeks back I spotted some volunteer tomato seedlings in the greenhouse border, I potted them up and yesterday I picked out and potted on the ones that took my fancy most. I'm really chuffed, some are variegated plants and they look to be dwarf or determinate types which is fun
Some are well marked others have just a dab on them.

[jayb]

This looks to be a small growing bush type with droopy/wilting leaves, slight variegation on the leaf edges and possibly some antho. I think this is volunteer from Dancing Val.
It'll be a nice type for a basket or growing in a pot.

[jayb]

This little one has nice colouring and is staying small and compact. No sign of flowers yet.

[Silverleaf]

Interesting! Never seen variegated tomatoes before, very cool.

[jayb]

The variety 'Variegated' is the main one available, quite a nice tomato with very pretty striped fruit. They are not as robust as regular coloured types and not so productive. It was thought until quite recently that variegation was not heritable, happily it is. It's a recessive gene v.

The variety Variegated, unripe fruit.


I've grown a couple of other varieties and had a couple show up. The Green Zebra Cherry I grew a few years ago had slight variegated foliage and also a segregating variety of Tom's, Lange Ærmer. I call it VAL, quite a pretty and tasty indeterminate, wispy leaves with green stripy elongated fruit.

[Silverleaf]

Very pretty!

[jayb]

The Dancing Val volunteer is forming into a nice little plant. It's currently no more than about 8" high with lots of branches and flowers forming, the leaves are quite delicate being slightly wispy, I think it will be a mass of flowers and tomatoes once it gets going.




Only some of the branches/leaves are variegated.

[jayb]

The variegation pattern on the dwarf volunteers is quite different to 'Dancing Val' family. The dwarf ones I think have the variety Variegated in their parentage, I'll have to look up what I was growing in that area last year.
Their colouration is much more bold.

This is taken from above, flowers, stems and leaves all have variegation.







The difference in leaf size is quite marked in leaves with a lot of variegation.

[Silverleaf]

That stripy tomato stem is just amazing! I love it.

[Galina]

Are the yellower parts of the leaves smaller and is this another case of yellow being less vigorous than green, like we have seen with the potato onions from seed? And perhaps with the yellow pea pods that took longer to develop last autumn than the green ones? Yes they look striking, but maybe a mixed blessing?

[jayb]

Yes, I guess no chlorophyll. The the less green the less energy they can make. Shows up quite well on the leaves that are one half green and the other mostly coloured.
Same for the potato onions, the lighter they are the more pronounced the affects. The really white seedlings I had died quite quickly, once they ran out of energy from the seed. The peas shouldn't be too affected as it's only the pods not the whole plant.

These tomatoes will never win any production prizes, particularly as these ones are dwarfs or short growing determinates, but I love them

[Silverleaf]

Chlorophyll comes in different shades, commonly yellow and blueish-green, and most plants will have a mixture of the different types combining to make a shade of green.

Yellow pea pods only have yellow chlorophyll. That white foliage doesn't have any chlorophyll at all, I think.

[jayb]

Interesting, I wondered how the green leaf colour was made up, there are some tomato varieties that are a light greeny colour, I'm sure I've got one crossed to a dwarf somewhere.

[Silverleaf]

I guess different plants have different amounts of the two colours, and that's why you get such a wide spectrum of foliage colour. Once you add in anthocyanins and carotenes and such there's a lot of possible variety!

[jayb]

Wonderful isn't it.