📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Dragon Eye (Glaz Drakona)
- 🌍 Origin: A highly decorative novelty variety circulated among Eastern European collectors (popularized by sellers like V.D. Popenko).
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate (tall). A mid-season variety that performs well even when grown outdoors in open ground.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Small, cocktail-sized tomatoes that range from oblate (flattened-round) to slightly flattened hearts. The coloration is stunning: a deep pink base covered in fine, elegant gold and yellow stripes. Average weight is around 4.2 oz (120 g).
- 👅 Flavor: Grown primarily for its ornamental value. Flavor reviews are mixed – some find it good, while others report it as ordinary or somewhat bland/mild.
Indet. Fruits are oblate, pink with thin and elegant gold stripes, good taste, weighing up to 4.2 oz (120 g). A very decorative variety. It turned out to be mid-season for me in terms of ripening. Seeds were from V.D. Popenko.
Dragon Eye. Indeterminate, mid-season variety. The fruits are small, flattened pink hearts with gold stripes, beautiful and unusual. The taste is ordinary, even a bit bland. Grew outdoors in open ground.
Elena mentions that while the Dragon Eye tomato is “beautiful and unusual,” the flavor was a bit “bland” (mild/lacking acid).
This is a very common trade-off in the world of novelty tomatoes! Breeders who select for stunning visual traits—like sharp metallic stripes, anthocyanin (purple/black) shoulders, or extreme shapes—sometimes accidentally leave flavor behind in the genetic lottery. Varieties like this are fantastic for adding a pop of gorgeous color to a salad or a market stand, but if you are looking for that intense, punch-you-in-the-face old-school tomato flavor, you often have to go back to the ugly, lumpy heirlooms!
