WORDS OF WISDOM From Amateur Gardening’s historic 138-year-old archive
This extract from AG 2 August 1975 looks at wild plants that are ancestors of many vegetables
The sand leek (Allium scorodoprasum) is found mostly in sandy places and on wasteland in northern England and southern Scotland
Wild Parsnip (Pastinaca sativa) with yellow flowers and Wild carrot (Daucus carota) with white flowers flowering on cliff top grassland in Dorset
Vegetables with a pinch of salt Tony Venison looks at the seashore weeds from which many of our cultivated vegetables are derived, including cabbages, carrots, parsnips and leeks
T
HERE’S more for the gardener on holiday at the seaside than the band on the prom playing ‘tiddly-om-pom-pom’. If you are planning to visit a seaside resort, why not take the opportunity to become acquainted with some of the ancestors of our better-known vegetables? Not the droopy lettuce leaves (do they never have hearts?) dished up by boarding-house landladies (do they never have hearts?), nor the frozen peas that perpetually appear at meal times. What I am referring to are the wild plants that grow on sand dunes and cliffs around our shores. Scruffy seashore weeds Vegetables such as beetroot, seakale and cabbage had their origins in scruffy seashore weeds. Centuries ago man discovered that they were edible, and cooked or stewed them with his meat. Later he took to cultivating them, selecting the finest and improving their quality until these vegetables attained the forms we know today. Asparagus is another native of coastal
42 AMATEUR GARDENING 22 OCTOBER 2022
Wild asparagus can be found growing in coastal habitats such as cliffs, sand dunes and shingle beaches
regions and for that reason we dress its beds in gardens every winter with agricultural salt. Whether this practice is really beneficial now seems doubtful. Certainly, wherever I have found asparagus growing in its wild haunts on the Dorset coast and in parts of Cornwall, it appears to relish its regular drenchings with salt sea spray. Shoots of wild asparagus are not really fat enough to cut for cooking, but watch for them on rocky cliff slopes in the south-west. A much more plentiful plant, found on
From the wild cabbage Brassica oleracea our garden forms of greens were developed
mudflats and foreshores, is the common beetroot (Beta maritima), the leaves of which were gathered and eaten by fishermen until the present century. It is from this plant that our modern varieties of garden beetroot have been bred. Two wild forms exist – one with purplish-red roots and leaves, and the other with yellowish-green colouring, not unlike the herb good King Henry (Chenopodium bonus-henricus) to which it is related. Anyone who has let their beetroot run to seed will recognise the 2ft (60cm)
