{"id":3879,"date":"2016-02-11T14:19:14","date_gmt":"2016-02-11T13:19:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/?page_id=3879"},"modified":"2020-12-12T11:44:17","modified_gmt":"2020-12-12T10:44:17","slug":"the-hampshire-perennial-vegetable-triangle","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/?page_id=3879","title":{"rendered":"The Hampshire Perennial Vegetable Triangle"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m very pleased to be invited to give a talk organised by the Curtis Museum in Alton, Hampshire, UK, not far from where I grew up, but not until 27th April 2017!<\/p>\n

In my book I introduce the Hampshire towns of Alresford (watercress), Selborne (Gilbert White and sea kale) and Alton as the \u201cHampshire perennial vegetable triangle\u201d or the UK hotspot of perennial vegetable domestication. Alton is included as the home of botanist William Curtis, who was Praefectus Horti at the Chelsea Physic Garden in London in the 1770s. He wrote a pamphlet, \u2018Directions for the culture of the Crambe maritima or Sea Kale, for the use of the Table\u2019 in 1799 to bolster efforts in introducing it as a market vegetable. Who should turn up to my first ever UK lecture at Hilliers Garden in Hampshire in May 2015 than a volunteer, Sheila John, from the Curtis Museum in Alton, unknowing that I had mentioned Curtis in my book. Her eyes certainly opened wide on my mention of the triangle in my talk! Sheila wrote afterwards: \u201cWe were especially interested to hear about the \u2018Hampshire Triangle\u2019 and as I mentioned, I volunteer at Alton\u2019s Curtis Museum. The William Curtis after whom the museum is named was a distant cousin of the botanist and lived a generation later than him. (There was a whole Curtis dynasty in Alton right up to 1957 and most of them seem to have been called William!) But we still hold William the botanist in high esteem, the house he grew up in in the centre of Alton is still there and in the Allen Gallery, the Curtis Museum\u2019s sister organisation, we sell cards of his botanical illustrations and even have panels of them sewn onto the cushions in the gallery caf\u00e9.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

A good opportunity then to show a collection of pictures of Sea Kale, one of the truly best vegetables, that should, if there was such a thing, be the National English vegetable!<\/p>\n

See also http:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/?page_id=1281<\/a> about the day at Hilliers<\/p>\n

\"HPVT\"
The “Hampshire perennial vegetable triangle\u201d or the UK hotspot of perennial vegetable domestication. Also shown is Eastleigh where I was born and grew up and the home of my publishers<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"20150706175901-b06fe642-me\"<\/a>
Habitat at Lindesnes, southern Norway<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"20150706175816-260d14c2-me\"<\/a>
Sea Kale showing off its edimentality at Lindesnes, southern Norway<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"20150706175853-34f29527-me\"<\/a>
Sea Kale showing off its edimentality at Lindesnes, southern Norway<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"OLYMPUS<\/a>
Natural habitat simulated<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"OLYMPUS<\/a>
Crambe maritima and Aster tripolium<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"OLYMPUS<\/a>
Crambe maritima (blanched, unblanched and Lily White) and Aster tripolium<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Fig2_17b_Crambe_mar_Wisley_IMG_0503\"<\/a>
At RHS Wisley, UK in one of the ornamental borders<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Fig2_19b_Crambe_mar_IMG_1884\"<\/a>
Blanching pot<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Fig2_22_Crambe_mar_caterpillars_IMG_1811\"<\/a>
I’ve never experienced Cabbage White caterpillars on Sea Kale. This was in the UK.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Fig2_16_Crambe_mar_pots_Chelsea_HPIM6168\"<\/a>
Chelsea Physic Garden in London and William Curtis….<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Fig2_18_Crambe_mar_HPIM4203\"<\/a>
My oldest Sea Kale (over 30 now) spring unblanched shoots<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\"OLYMPUS<\/a> \"Fig2_19a_Crambe_mari_HPIM4578\"<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m very pleased to be invited to give a talk organised by the Curtis Museum in Alton, Hampshire, UK, not far from where I grew up, but not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-3879","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3879"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3879\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27087,"href":"http:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3879\/revisions\/27087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}