What prompted this post was my finding of a pair of zebra
mussel encrusted sunglasses on the beach of our local lake last week. Zebra mussels are a recently introduced
invasive species that, despite best efforts, are proliferating in many local
Minnesota lakes. They are
hyper competitive and in a short period of time have become a dominant species
in the lake. Bad Zebra.
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| Bad Zebra |
For tomato lovers the tomato variety Green Zebra is
something many of us now take for granted. It was developed by Tom Wagner over 30 years ago and
released in 1983. It sometimes
called an heirloom, and Tom is often not given credit for the breeding. He combined the green stripe gene (gs) and
an interesting tasting green when ripe (GWR) background through a series of
crosses over many years of breeding.
Green Zebra was a founder source for Brad Gates and other breeders that
have combined stripes and great taste as a way to introduce novel looking and
tasty tomatoes. On Tom’s New World
Seeds website you can now buy seed of his reselected Green Zebra - we planted
it this year. Good Zebra.
Here are a few newer lines tracing in part to Green Zebra; Michael Pollan, a great striped GWR GZ derivative from Brad Gates; our MP x Cowlicks F1 (photo by Blane Horton); and three F2 segregants from that same cross.
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| Michael Pollan |
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| MP x Cowlicks Brandywine F1 |
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| F2 segregants MP x Cowlicks |
