General Information
The Red Teardrop cherry tomato is small like grape tomatoes, and more pear-shaped than plum tomatoes. Its unique figure is source for its two most common names, Teardrop or Pear tomato. It is a popular tomato cultivar that produces uniform, crack resistant fruit with a sweet and tangy flavor. They have a firm texture, juicy interior, and their teardrop shape and translucent yellow flesh distinguish them from other cherry tomatoes. The Red Teardrop plants are an indeterminate, or climbing, variety, as they are large, prolific vining plants that will continue to produce clusters of the one-inch fruit throughout the entire season.
The Yellow Teardrop cherry tomato is similar in texture to a typical cherry tomato but milder in flavor and smaller in size, with a shape like a pear. Hence, this variety is also known as a Yellow Pear tomato. It is tender-firm and thin-skinned, and its juicy texture looks like that of a vine-ripened tomato. It has lots of seeds, and its flavor is rich and sweet. Like most varieties of Teardrop or Pear tomatoes, Yellow Teardrops are heirlooms that grow on indeterminate foliage. The plant produces an abundance of small yellow fruits, about one inch in size, throughout the season, and it grows best in warmer weather. The plants are large, sprawling, and hardy, and often require staking or caging.
History
The Teardrop tomato is believed to be one of the oldest American heirlooms dating back to the 1700s. All tomato cultivars can trace their roots to coastal South America where eleven species of wild tomatoes have been growing for millions of years. Cherry tomatoes evolved from wild tomatoes, and are believed to be the first domesticated species, originally cultivated in Mexico or Peru. Variants within the tomato species increased with time and cultivation, and spontaneous mutations resulted in unique cultivars, such as the Teardrop tomato. Today, more than one hundred cultivated varieties of tomatoes exist with new types being developed each year.
