Saturday, August 15, 2015

The New Vegetables


Lots of exciting changes were happening to European vegetables in the 16th century. Recently discovered plants were being introduced from the new world including: corn, potatoes, peppers, pumpkins, and beans. Breeders were also developing new improved varieties of well known plants. All of these changes greatly improved European diets. There are so many prints of vegetables from this period because they were new and exciting.

For example, the familiar sweet fleshy orange carrot did not exist before the 16th century. The Dutch  created a new larger and tastier vegetable by crossbreeding the smaller beet colored carrot of their day with a variety of wild carrots and a yellow mutant carrot.

Remember to eat your vegetables. They are healthy and played an important part in history.

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