The Tradescants' Culinary Treasures

Abstract

This article discusses the early importation of culinary plants into England by the father and son gardener/adventurers, John Tradescant the elder and John Tradescant the younger. These men arguably did more to change the botanical and gastronomic landscape in England in the seventeenth century than anyone else. Traveling to the Low Countries, France, Algiers, Russia, and the New World, the Tradescants spent their lives collecting new plants and then growing and propagating those plants for their own use and for distribution. Bound up with global politics and the building of the British Empire, their activities mark the beginnings of the long era of the movement of edible plants around the planet. The John Tradescants' contribution to the edenizing of the English garden was really extraordinary, broadening the possibilities of taste at the English table.