I was looking through my Richters Herbs catalog this morning, getting some ideas for the Herb sub-committee meeting, and noticed information about something called “Seed Zoo“. Basically they are working with ethnobotanists to preserve traditional varieties of vegetables found in different parts of the world. This isn’t a new concept, certainly. I’ve been a fan of Native Seed SEARCH for quite a while. They preserve traditional plants and seeds from the desert Southwest.

If you visit the Seed Zoo website, they have interesting stories to go with each seed about where they came from. While many of them probably wouldn’t grow well here, I always find it extremely interesting to see the differences in fruits and vegetables grown in different parts of the world.

One thing I find interesting is that in the descriptions, a couple of times they say that the particular melon was growing in a very hot humid location, therefore that variety might have some good disease tolerance. I suppose that is possible. It is also possible that some of the diseases we find problematic do not exist in those locations. Like plants, not all diseases naturally exist everywhere. They have to be spread to a new location in one way or another. That’s one reason that there are restrictions on importing plant material into the U.S.

Anyway, check out those links to see some very unique vegetables! (And if you’ve never looked at the selection of herbs from Richters, you should do that too!)