I never have. I had the same experience as you; no matter how early I started plants I didn't get flowers until late summer. So I thought it needed warm temperatures. But then the darn thing kept blooming until November in central Ohio! I've heard that cobaea is naturally pollinated by bats, but that the bats we have in North America simply don't do that. Found a few articles that reference that, this from a UCLA publication: Bat pollination is especially important in certain families, such as Old and New World Bombacaceae, including the baobab, kapok, and floss-silk tree species. Classical examples of bat flowers occur in the Bignoniaceae, including the sausage trees cultivated on the UCLA campus, and calabash, among others. Cobaea scandens, a cultivated vine of the phlox family (Polemoniaceae), has flagelliflory and is bat pollinated in western South America. Although in Westwood we have some bat-adapted flowers, and these plants form fruits, we have not determined yet whether bats are responsible for fruit formation on campus. This sounds like a good nighttime homework assignment for a UCLA undergraduate student, one not afraid of bats and vampires. And from the Kemper Center for Home Gardening: Native to Mexico and tropical South America, cup and saucer vine is a vigorous, rapid-growing, tendril-climbing vine that typically grows to 30-40 in its native habitat. When grown as an annual, it can grow 10-20Â in a single season. The descriptive common name is in reference to its bell-shaped flowers (cups), each of which is subtended by a saucer-like green calyx. Flowers last about 4 days, emerging green but maturing to purple. Flowers have a musky fragrance. Blooms late summer into fall. Pinnate leaves have four leaflets. Also commonly called cathedral bells. Flowers are reportedly pollinated by bats. And this from the Encyclopedia Britannica: Certain highly specialized tropical bats, particularly Macroglossus and Glossophaga, also obtain most or all of their food from flowers. The Macroglossus (big-tongued) species of southern Asia and the Pacific are small bats with sharp snouts and long, extensible tongues, which carry special projections (papillae) and sometimes a brushlike tip for picking up a sticky mixture of nectar and pollen. The plants involved have, in the process of evolution, responded to the bats by producing large (sometimes huge) amounts of these foods. One balsa-tree flower, for example, may contain a full 10 grams (0.3 ounce) of nectar, and one flower from a baobab tree has about 2,000 pollen-producing stamens. Some bat flowers also provide succulent petals or special food bodies to their visitors. Characteristics of the flowers themselves include drab colour, large size, sturdiness, bell-shape with wide mouth and, frequently, a powerful rancid or urinelike smell. The giant saguaro cactus and the century plant (Agave) are pollinated by bats, although not exclusively, and cup-and-saucer vine (Cobaea scandens) is the direct descendant of a bat-pollinated American plant. Calabash, candle tree, and areca palm also have bat-pollinated flowers. Somehow I don't think we can replicate this with a soda straw and long fingernails!

For genetic reasons one should never save seeds from just one fruit, better many fruits from one plant and better still many fruits from two plants, etc. And that hasto do with thepossibility of natural X pollinations if you don't bag blossoms or grow plants at isolation distances. There's a great article here at GW on how to prevent cross pollination which you can find by going to the top of this page, clicking on the FAQ's and scrolling down until you see that article. With pictures. Tom Wagner does single line seed saving which is quite different from the rest of us and he also uses TSP, which is very caustic and I don't reccommend it for us home growers. he also saves seed from unripe fruits and can do that b'c he is using TSP. TOm is a tomato breeder and so uses methods that many of us wouldn't. As to how to process seeds, Trudi knows that I suggest fermentation over any of the oxidative methods and the main reason for that, and I think there's a thread here which discusses it indetail,maybe elsewhere, I can't remember right now, is b'c there's no data to say how effective those methods are nor what infectious pathogens they might remove. But there is such data from Dr. Helene Dillard who had grants from Campbells and Heinz when she was at the USDA station in Geneva, NY. For sure the oxidative methods are quicker, not smelly, etc., but I'm one of many who will stick with fermentation until I see the kind of data I want to see for the alternative. Why not try both and see how it goes? Pete, you know the female parent for the cross you mentioned, which is Indian Stripe, a variety I introduced andlike very much, but how do you know what the male pollen parent could be when bees, which do most of the X pollination, can fly a very long way? If all the ovules in the tomato ovary of IS were X pollinatged then all the seeds you saved would be F1 hybrid seeds, but that's not usually the case, so with your saved F2 seeds you could get almost anything including normal IS plants that were self pollenized. But remember that if Stupice is involved, since it has PL foliage you may not see that showing up in the initial growout b'c that trait is recessive. If you have the greatest bee activity early in the season, then save fruits from later maturing ones, and the reverse holds true as well. That is if you're not bagging blossoms, etc. Having catfaced fruits early in the season is quite common and usually indicates self pollenization when temps are low. There's nothing wrong with saving seeds from cat faced fruits if you want to, but I usually pick the best fruits for seed saving and not jsut all the big ones. There;s genetic diversity within a variety so saving seeds form fruits of different sizes is a good thing. And it's sure fun to work with accidental crosses if you have the room, same for those who do directed crosses these days. Been there, done that. LOL Carolyn

well, i can tell you they are definitely not costoluto genovese here they are all called "cuore di bue" (which simply means ox heart), and you can buy them almost everywhere i suppose that "cuore di bue" is just a loose definition (something like "beefsteak" in us), actually covering more varieties under the same name first picture are pink, from a tomato enthusiast probably developing a special strain on his own second pic are orange-red, of the normal "cuore di bue variety you can buy everywhere,they are just unusually big and misshapen (the upper two) also consider that, due to globalization, i wouldn't be surprised if actually they were grown in Spain, or somewhere in Africa below you can find a link of what a normal cuore di bue looks like here there are a couple more: http://www.radisa.it/seedsaver.php?p=cuore_bue http://www.ortofrutticola.it/tesoridalbenga/4dalbenga/pomodorocuordibue.php but the link below is the more rapresentative of what i see everyday PS Ted, what do you mean for "fluted one"? they're all fluted :) if you tell me which one you're interested in, i can take a picture when i will cut it right now, i've eaten just two of the first picture, they were very meaty, with small holes full of seeds (not hollow); meat was pink, and seeds gel was orange (quite strange looking); also, there were some big seeds, and a lot of very small seeds (just in case it means anything to the experts) Here is a link that might be useful: cuore di bue

This study is pretty conclusive that tasters could tell the difference even between pink picked and table ripe picked fruit. However, the room ripened tomatoes were held at 20C/68F, which was probably much cooler than the field ripened fruit so it doesn't tell me if the difference was because of attachment to the plant or not. I know that when my garden ripend fruit develop during cold weather the flavor is off. http://postharvest.ucdavis.edu/datastorefiles/234-526.pdf Are pink picked fruit good enough to enjoy 100%? Yes Would some fruit picked table ripe off the plants taste slightly better? Probably. Would they all? probably not. Is the difference enough to gamble on losing fruit and taking the extra effort to hunt through the plants looking for eating ripe fruit? Not for me. I don't pick at blush stage because I don't have room for all of the fruit to sit around. They stay crack resistant until pretty far into the pink stage, so everything close to being ripe gets picked every three days or so.