Trophy

Excellent slicing tomato. Quite acidic; moderately sweet; juicy; good tomato flavor. Dark red medium sized globe tomato. Uniform. Red flesh. Low splitting tendency. Indeterminate plants measure 4.5-5' tall. Plants are especially leafy and bushy at their tops. Fruit in clusters of 2-5. Brix 5.9. Leaves lighter green in color and more heavily texture than average. Mid season maturity. Moderately productive when grown on Heritage Farm in 2018. Acquired by SSE from William Woys Weaver (PA WE W) who obtained the variety from Carolyn Male (NY MA C) in 1995 who obtained it from the USDA (PI 636255). Although it is unclear where the USDA sourced their seed, Weaver indicated that this variety physically matches the ‘Trophy’ tomato commercially introduced by Colonel George E. Waring, Jr. circa 1870. According to an essay titled “History of the Trophy Tomato” by L. H. Bailey printed in 1906, the ‘Trophy’ tomato, “…was almost the making of modern tomato culture.” In 1871, Colonel Waring offered a 100 dollar prize for the heaviest tomato grown from seed purchased from him which he was selling 20 seed for 5 dollars. The variety’s development began circa 1850 by crossing and selecting of “the small smooth ‘Love Apple,’ which was filled with juice and seeds, with the compound, convoluted tomato of that period” by Dr. Hand of Baltimore county, Maryland. Bailey went on to state “[t]he tomato so formed had reached a stable character long before it was brought to [Col. Waring’s] notice by Dr. Hand’s son, T.J. Hand, Esq., of New York.” This publication concluded that the seed had been widely disseminated in the 1870s and “while the Trophy tomato is, perhaps, no longer [in 1906] widely known under its own name, it was undoubtedly the progenitor of all the fine fruit now grown.” SSE Accession # 126194