Thorburn’s Lemon Blush Tomato
Lycopersicon lycopersicum 
 
Lemon Blush was developed over a 10 year period by Elbert S. Carman (1836-1901), longtime editor of The Rural New Yorker.  The tomato was first offered in the catalog of James Thorburn, a New York seed company, in 1893 and continued in Thorburn listings until 1912 when the tomato was renamed Lemon Queen.  The fruit is smooth, somewhat oblate, with a distinct pink blush on the blossom end and usually up one side of the tomato, thus giving it a peach-like appearance.  Like Thorburn’s Terra-Cotta, also bred and developed by Elbert Carman, one of the breeding parents of Lemon Blush was the French Peach tomato, hence its luscious fruit-like texture.  We include here a chromo engraving of the tomato when it was first introduced.  25 seeds