I can offer a hand and clarify for you some issues and have already fetched some links you should know about.

But right now i have no time to do a complete post for you, hopefully tomorrow.

Carolyn

If you can give me any tips or help on pinning it down, that would be super. I've been working very hard to get this plant through the FL heat as the flavor is incredible. While I'm a newbie heirloom enthusiast ... I bet this will be 'the taste' that will be the one to remember for me no matter what I grow later. Thanks in advance.

Sorry I'm a day late in getting back to you.

You won't be able to ID it with any presently known gold/red bicolor b'c there are over 200 similar ones known and most look the same, with a few exceptions, and there are differences in how the fruits taste and how robust the plants are.

Below I've linked to Tania's data base for bicolors and you can see how many there are, well over 200 on her list and even more in SSE YEarbooks,

Yes, Ruby Gold was first listed in a seed catalog in NYS in 1921 but that doesn't say it was from NY. And yes, Ben Quisenberry did rename Ruby Gold to Gold Medal in 1976.

Back then, a year after SSE was started it wasn't known that there were so many gold/red bicolors and of course some do have stripe in the name, but that doesn't mean they aren't true bicolors,which have a secondary reddish color that extends upwards from the stem end, to different heights on the fruits, dependingon the variety, and that same seconday color is found as marbling within the fruits.

The origin of these bicolors goes back to Germany and nearby and when some of them came to the US they brought seeds with them. So the main places where one finds them, at least originally, was in the SE and then the midwest wherever those of German ancestry settled.

So we have a varity called Mary Robinson's German Bicolor, to give just one example.

My brother now lives in NC and a local person was growing one that had been in his family for years and my brother wanted to know if I wanted seeds. I told him no, since most of the ones I'd grown myself, and there were quite a few, I knew this new one wouldn't be much different.

There are some varieties I like better than others but these bicolors are very finicky and can be lucious and sweet one season, and the same variety mealy and bland the next season, and that' due to specific weather in any one season.

I hope I've been able to help and if you have any more questions, please jusut post them here in your thread.

Carolyn

Here is a link that might be useful: Bicolor varieties

I'm laughing a bit b'c I had finished answering you before I just got your PM from GW and no,I can't respond to that unless you have it set up that it's sent with your own e-mail.

And don't ask me how to do that b'c I don't know how that's done.LOL

Carolyn

I hope I've been able to help

Carolyn, Indeed, you have! I appreciate that you share your passion and wonderful analytical ability, which seems so hard to find when so many curious gardeners dare to pin down a "why?".

On one hand it is unfortunate there is so much uncertainty, yet on the other I suppose that keeps the mystique and is exciting in its own different way. So unless I pull a name out of a hat, my tomato will likely be the most delicious mutt or heirloom in the world to me, depending on my mood.

Just one question on your text which I have read twice just to make sure I understood. You mentioned the secondary color, reddening, starts at the stem end for these "striped"/"bicolor" varieties. I would describe this particular heirloom mostly as a core of red on the blossom end - Is this correct semantics? By secondary color for this, I assume the primary color is yellow, and the secondary color would be the sometimes prominant red striping which seems to appear from the blossom end in a radial-star pattern with typically 8-10 points here. Or does secondary for bicolor mean a secondary red color after the base and primary stripe (don't think so, but just want to be sure).

Again, I appreciate you taking the time out of your day to lend a helping hand, even though the bottom line is bad news in a simply 'taxonomic' sense LOL. These tomatoes were so juicy and solid; you really have to dig to notice more than two seeds!

Here's a virtual bite of thanks (This is The tomato that opened the world of heirlooms to me, even though I had already planted about 7 other heirlooms before:

PS The email function mystery can rest until after I learn all about tomato breeding in my next lifetime!

-PC

Yes, the initial color blush is at the blossom end and different folks refer to it as red, pink, reddishpink, take your choice.

The initial color of the fruiit I call not a yellow, but a golden color which is why I refer to these as gold/red bicolors.

As that secondary color moves up the exterior of a fruit, and for quite a few varieties it doesn't go up very much, there may be some leading edges, if you know what I mean,and then some folks use the word striped, to describe that, but by the time it stops ascending those stripes are not always that prominent.

Below I've linked to a Google IMAGES page to show more of these. With Google IMAGES it's always best to hold your mouse over a picture,click on it if you want to to see more info so you know what you're looking at.

There are always photgraphy issues as to true color and so help me I think some of those, a few, have been photoshopped.LOL

Carolyn

Here is a link that might be useful: various red/gold bicolors

I planted one from store bough heirloom that looked just like this in the picture . They call it "Georgia Steak".
It is just a sitting there in the garden.

Yes, I've grown Georgia Streak, and what's more interesting about that one to me is that Jeff Dawson in CA crossed it with Russian #117, a flat double red heart, to get the first bicolored heart called Orange Russian #117, which is what Jeff himself named it although others have used some different names.

In the link below take a look at the first known bicolor heart, which I've also grown,

Carolyn

Here is a link that might be useful: Oange Russian # 117