What kind of tomato is this?

[Gary350]

Got this at the store. All it says is Hairloom.

What kind of tomato is this?

I got it for seeds. I am getting ready to plant the winter garden. Maybe I will have tomatoes all winter.

[PaulF]

That would be very difficult. The #3423 is a generic label denoting Heirloom Tomato. The newer labels will have a bar code whereby the exact variety and producer can be traced. Just because it has a label that says Heirloom, it does not always mean it is one. Ask you store where they got it and start your research if it really means that much. Looks nice and if it tastes good you are ahead of the game.

[rainbowgardener]

I don't think anyone could tell by looking at the tomato. There are many hundreds if not thousands of different tomato varieties. Medium sized round red would be the commonest description.

[Gary350]

Ok. I was hoping for a guess maybe several different tomatoes could be it.

It sure is dark color with some places almost black and some a bit purple. Not very large 2.5" diameter. After cutting it in half I see it is not a beef steak type tomato.

Flavor is very low acid and not a lot of tomato flavor. Not many grocery store tomatoes have tomato flavor. It looks like it could be a good home grown garden tomato if fully ripe.

[Francis Barnswallow]

Might be one of those tomatoes that turn all black when ripe. I tried growing those a few years ago but with very little success.

[gumbo2176]

This is a very loose stab, but look up Black Krim. Like posted before, there are soooo many varieties of tomatoes that fit that profile.

[applestar]

One characteristic I learned you need to identify a tomato variety is to check for the color of the skin (epidermis or "epi"): Pull off the skin without any flesh (or scrape it) then flatten it on a white surface. It will look yellow or clear (clear is somewhat stained by the color of the flesh). Black Krim has yellow skin, Cherokee Purple for example has clear skin.

What color epidermis does this tomato have?

[rainbowgardener]

As near as I can tell, there's not a good searchable database of tomato varieties. I know about tatiana's, but it seems like you can only look up by one category, color or shape or whatever. But if you look up black tomatoes, you just get a list of 272 of them with no way I could find to sort it any further. It would be tedious, but not difficult to create a database where you could enter whatever characteristics you know (color, size, shape, leaf type, dwarf or regular plant, determinate or in-, etc) and it would pull up everything that meets all of those criteria.