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Here’s another (VGA bed) volunteer that is stumping me. 3 to 4 inch diameter, yellow epi, smooth flattened beefsteak shape, meaty WHITE flesh interior with yellow gel.

— this yellow epi with white flesh is actually pretty unusual —

Flavor is mild front end, sweet umami middle, with tangy gel and lingering acid. It is a good assertively flavored tomato and DD has pronounced it “savory”.

The plant is stunted due to overcrowding, but appears to have dwarf rugose leaves or potato leaf leaves — I can’t tell for sure.

— this is a volunteer — likely source are seeds survived in compost....


- ALL THREE fruits had that tiny bit of skin buried in the blossom end flesh — it’s not from my knife


— if that’s not rugose, but potato leaf, then maybe, possibly, Yellow Brandywine? But the fruit size seem too small and there are a lot of cut interior images on the Internet, but they appear to be yellow and juicier flesh inside? I HAVE been trying to grow this variety from MIL’s saved seeds for the last couple of years, but I don’t have a record of successfully growing them to mature fruit — even spoiled fruit...


...Can anyone think of other likely candidates?

Oh wait! I did find a reference! — in a cooking report from 2016....

Subject: What are you eating from your garden in 2016
Aug 01, 2016

applestar wrote:

applestar wrote:Upo? I'm really curious now. I bought a short one at the Hmart -- am looking at it wondering what to do....

I looked around and noted that imafan kept mentioning soup. So I grabbed a couple of reference recipes from the Internet and made a Turkey and Upo soup.



Yellow color (aside from the stove hood light) is from my MIL's tomato -- I think it was a Yellow Brandywine -- very yummy front end and middle flavor notes with strong acid finish. I thought it would go better with the left over roast turkey, color wise, than a red tomato.

This actually brings up an intriguing possibility of an accidental/bee-cross — just speculating now ... The Yellow Brandywine fruit that is mentioned in the cooking report had come from my MIL’s garden. I’m pretty sure she was growing Lemon Boy among other varieties alongside the Yellow Brandywine at the time. And the round-fruited Lemon Boy is among the Internet photos that show the meaty white interior flesh, though not subdivided beefsteak locules like Brandywine.

Lemon Boy is a commercial hybrid, and may explain why my intentionally saved seeds have not been growing well for me, though it could just as well be blamed on gardener error as well.

Yellow Brandywine has always been more orangy for me and Lemon Boy by all sites are very yellow much like your photo. As for a cross between the two that may be the deal since Yellow Brandy and Lemon Boy are both quite sweet. So a hybrid seed grown out may not have had the sweetness gene to pass on either to itself or to the YB. Some places try to say LB is lower acid but it is actually the sugar content not the acidity. The Brandywine would be potato leaf and the photos I have seen of Lemon Boy is also potato leaf.

Thank you for your observations @PaulF — it sounds like I should to be pursuing this and grow the saved seeds out for another generation to see what will happen!

Sure! Why not?

Are you sure it may not be a white tomato?

See the pile of yellow skin in the bottom center photo? That makes it yellow, not white.