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Brandywine and Company – What We Know and What We Don’t (One Person’s Opinion)

Planted October 15, 2002
Last tended to on October 16, 2024
Reading time: 13 minutes

Brandywine and Company – What We Know and What We Don’t (One Person’s Opinion)

by Craig LeHoullier, Ph.D.

Brandywine is a large fruited (most fruit in the one pound range), potato leaf, pink heirloom tomato that has taken on legendary status due to its potentially superb flavor. However, because many individuals have become involved with growing the variety, saving seed and sharing it with others, it seems as though numerous “selections” and/or sub-strains are now “out there” (some of which are inferior in flavor or performance), with no easy way of knowing which strain you have.

To further complicate matters, there are a number of cultivars with “Brandywine” as part of their name – and some of these are showing variability, due to inadvertent crossing or selecting. The following tomatoes all carry the name “Brandywine”:

Brandywine – Indeterminate, pink fruited, large fruit, oblate shape, some green shoulders, some ribbed shoulders, some cracking, yield can range from low to relatively high, potato leaf, meaty, flavor from insipid to superb. History: This is fairly certain, Brandywine is a tomato that found its way into the Seed Savers Exchange collection in 1982. It got there via an elderly (now deceased) Ohio gardener named Ben Quisenberry, who received the variety from a woman named Dorris Sudduth Hill. She stated that they had been in her family for over 80 years.  I do not know where the Dorris came from – hence, where the tomato originated. [This tomato is differentiated in the trade as Brandywine, Sudduth Strain.]

The key question is whether Brandywine was a family heirloom that arose from a commercial variety via selection, or was brought from overseas. The first tomato of a similar description to appear in seed catalogs is Turner’s Hybrid (Burpee) or Mikado (Henderson); it is not clear as to whether these are the same tomato with one company renaming it, or two tomatoes that are very similar. Johnson and Stokes also introduced a variety called Brandywine.

Johnson & Stokes advertisement from The Ohio Farmer, January 12, 1889. Fig. 1 – Johnson & Stokes advertisement from The Ohio Farmer, January 12, 1889

An old Burpee catalog (1892) described it as a red tomato that is “inferior to Matchless” (a red, medium large sized Burpee variety).

A Burpee catalog reprint which states, “Introduced in 1886 by W. Atlee Burpee & Co., Philadelphia. Fig. 2 – A Burpee catalog reprint which states, “Introduced in 1886 by W. Atlee Burpee & Co., Philadelphia.”

I would love to see the pages from the three catalogs when Turner’s Hybrid, Mikado and Brandywine were introduced to read the exact descriptions. (Note: I need to do more research on the above and verify dates, since they do not make sense).

(Note that Carolyn Male and I obtained from the USDA seed collection several tomatoes with the name “Mikado” included:

The latter two seed samples, in limited grow-outs, yielded indeterminate, regular leaf plants with large red (scarlet) beefsteak type fruit of fine flavor. Mikado, over several years of growing seeds from each accession, gave a mixture – regular leaf, large fruited red; potato leaf, large fruited red; regular leaf, medium sized pink, and potato leaf, medium sized pink. This indicates that the seed stock is not pure. No outcome resembled Brandywine in fruit size or flavor, however.

Once word of the supreme flavor of Brandywine got around, it became the most popular of the heirloom tomatoes offered via the SSE yearbook, and even found its way into a number of mainstream seed catalogs, such as Stokes and Parks. What is clear is that at least one selection, sold by the defunct Tomato Seed Company of Metuchen, New Jersey, has consistently inferior flavor. The strain carried by Johnny’s Selected Seeds came from a seed donation by me – I received the variety from Roger Wentling of Pennsylvania in 1986. He in turn received the variety from Ken Ettlinger of the Long Island Seed and Plant company. Ken received it from Ben Quisenberry, thus the Johnson & Stokes strain is the Quisenberry/Sudduth strain. There is an inaccurate relist of the variety in the SSE yearbook – because I got the strain from “PA WE R”, one seed saver relisted it as Pawer’s Brandywine, thus illustrating how names can be improperly perpetuated.

Substrains, selections, and erroneous names:

Yellow Brandywine – Indeterminate, golden fruited, large fruit, oblate shape, some green shoulders, some ribbed shoulders, some cracking, yield can range from low to high, potato leaf, meaty, flavor intense and on the tart side. History: I received seeds of Yellow Brandywine from Barbara Lund of Ohio in 1991. Barbara claims she received the variety from Charles Knoy of Indiana. I sent this variety to Rob Johnston, and that is the strain carried by Johnny’s Selected Seed.

In looking at the seed catalog literature, the only tomato listed which matches closely the description of Yellow Brandywine is an old Henderson variety listed in 1890 called Shah – described as a gold fruited sport from Mikado. (NOTE: William Woys Weaver, in his book, draws the inaccurate conclusion that Shah is a medium sized cream or white tomato).

Substrains and selections:

The first listing of the red, regular leaf, authentic strain of Red Brandywine was in 1988 – listed by Steve Miller, who got the variety from Tom Hauch of Heirloom Seeds. (In his seed catalog, Tom states that this tomato originated with Chester County, Pennsylvania farmers in 1885). From my review of all of the SSE yearbooks, it is clear that many listings under Red Brandywine were, and still are, a mis-listing of Brandywine (the pink potato leaf tomato). Though there are often 20 or more listings of Red Brandywine in some yearbooks, no more than 12 listings are the regular leaf, red, authentic variety – the rest are misplaced listings of Brandywine (the pink potato leaf one). To make matters worse, improper seed saving has led to the recent appearance of a red, potato leaf variety that is probably a selection from a cross or a mislabeling of some other variety. Thus the Brandywine story continues to become more convoluted all of the time.

Sub-strains, stabilized crosses and selections listed in the “Red Tomato” section of the SSE Yearbooks:

History of the Brandywine Tomatoes in the Seed Savers Exchange Yearbooks

1975-1981:

1982:

1983:

1984:

1985:

1986:

1987:

1988:

1989:

1990:

1991:

1992:

1993:

1994:

1995:

1996:

1997:

1998:

1999:

2000:

This article text copyright © 2002 by Craig LeHoullier. Reproduction in part or full without prior permission from the author is prohibited.

An image of the cover of Craig LeHoullier’s book, Epic Tomatoes: How to Select and Grow the Best Varieties of All Time. If you click on the image above, you will be directed to various purchase options at Amazon.

Craig LeHoullier, Ph.D. - As a pioneer heirloom tomato variety preservationist, Craig authored the best selling book entitled, "Epic Tomatoes: How to Select and Grow the Best Varieties of All Time". Click here for more information about Craig and his work.

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