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| Experiments on Plant
Hybridization
26 November – 18 December, 2010
Dianne Tanzer Gallery
Melbourne, VIC |
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 articipants
are invited to join an amateur horticultural adventure
to rediscover lost cultivars of edible and otherwise
useful plants. In consultation with botanists and seed
libraries, we are endeavouring – for a length
of time determined by the (growing) number of subscribers
– to locate seeds of a given ‘vanished’
plant for distribution to members. If within that time
the desired cultivar remains elusive, another closely
related rarity will be substituted in its place.
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Lost Cultivars Subscription Service: ‘Crown Pea’
(Batch of 24)
2010
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 he
Lost Cultivars Subscription Service hereby sets
out on its first expedition, in search of the ‘Crown
Pea’ (or ‘Rose’ or ‘Mummy’
pea), a curious variety of edible pea that after 300 years
of cultivation in Europe, fell out of favour with the
shift from hand-picking to industrial agriculture –
for which its dense, crown-like crop and ‘fasciated’
stem, the result of a genetic abnormality once studied
by Mendel, were no longer desirable traits. The Lost
Cultivars Subscription Service looks forward to a
time akin to the 1800s, when peas were commonly available
in a vast range of such quirky varieties (unscrupulous
seed catalogues not infrequently announcing new ones that
could be better described as ‘old friends with new
names’), that along with their ease of cultivation
ensured a succession of fresh produce over an extended
season from May to October.
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Perfect for hand-picking
2010
Solarplate exposure unit (acrylic on glass, display case,
wallpaper)
55 x 55 x 4 cm |
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Lost Cultivars Subscription Service: ‘Crown Pea’
(Batch of 24)
2010
Solarplate etching on book page and Crown Pea seeds*
13 x 8 cm
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he
beginning of an ongoing series of works involving collaboration
with scientists to locate disappearing plant species,
the Lost Cultivars Subscription Service ‘Crown
Pea’ offered up to subscribers 24 (as yet) empty
seed packets, made from folded pages of the 1950s home
gardening classic Shrubs and Trees for Australian
Gardens, over which we printed solar etched fragments
of the original Crown Pea. The solar etchings were created
by drawing onto the glass surface of a display case-turned-exposure-unit,
using the Crown Pea’s depiction in the Gardeners
Chronicle of 1849, or rather its reproduction today
on a small sign in Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens,
as imperfect reference.
Please note: A limited number of subscriptions
are still available for Batch no. 1: ‘Crown Pea’.
Contact us for further information.
*Each subscriber contributes towards the project research
and will receive their seeds by post in early 2011
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