The characteristics of the dwarf curly leaf tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.) mutant, cu-3, were investigated via hybridization with the Curl, Cu, and dwarf, dcr, mutants. When Cu plants were crossed to cu-3 or dcr parents, F1 plants expressed the Cu phenotype, whereas two parental and two nonparental types were present in each F2. The transgressive groups were the wild type (+), which developed normal expanded leaves, and the midvein-invisible type (MI), which developed extremely distorted curly leaves. Crosses between cu-3 and dcr plants produced nonparental wild-type plants in F1, and two parental and one wild type in F2. There was no allelism or linkage between cu-3 and Cu, dcr, or dpy (the dumpy mutant). Cu was epistatic to both cu-3 and dcr. The cu-3 allele was epistatic to dcr; however, dcr plants (in the cu-3+cu-3 dcr dcr genotype) could produce cu-3 progeny. The cu-3 plants always bred true, cu-3 hindered the Cu-type progeny from becoming a majority group in Cu and cu-3 hybridizations. Both cu-3 and cu-3+ caused >33% decrease in fruit size of Cu, dcr, +, and MI progeny of their Cu and dcr hybrids; a >50% decrease in seed number per fruit was evident in such progeny of the cu-3 hybrids.Key words: Lycopersicon esculentum Mill., L. pimpinellifolium (Jusl.) Mill., epistatic effects, recombinant types, transgressive groups.