Sucker's are really called lateral branches, appear in the crotch, if you will, between two other stems and they go on to form a normal branch which has blossoms which set fruit.

The word sucker came about when some folks thought that they sucked the energy from the plant and didn't form fruit.

And neither of those things are true.

Carolyn, who never removes lateral branches from her tomato plants, but some who grow only for competition size fruits often do, as well as taking of almost all fruits on a plant.

How do you tell ??

Don't worry about it. What are called suckers shouldn't be removed anyway unless you are really into pruning for some reason. All it does is cost you fruit production.

But a "bloom" is a flower, a blossom that with luck turns into a tomato. Not a leaf or a branch or a stem. A bloom truss (a cluster of blooms) develops directly off a stem, not in the apex of 2 stems.

Dave

Thanks guys appreciate the info. Evidently I was going by "old" information. Good gardening.