The Seeds Of HistoryThe Seeds Of History

One of the unsung joys of the holiday season is the arrival of the seed catalogs. They're sliding into our mailboxes, luring us toward spring like a carrot dangling from a stick.

Of these, the most unusual is the Seeds Savers Exchange Yearbook. Unlike others with tempting photos, there are only descriptions here. And where most have 40 pages or so, the yearbook has a telephone directory girth of 460 pages and features more than 12,000 varieties of fruit, vegetable, and grain seeds.

If you're bored with the typical two dozen tomato varieties most seed catalogs offer, this is for you. The exchange has a whopping 136 pages of tomato seeds alone--and 254 different snap beans.

There are pre-Columbian seeds grown by Native American tribes, seeds grown by Thomas Jefferson, and an enormous collection of seeds brought from around the world by immigrants.

How does the exchange manage to have this variety? The yearbook works like a clearinghouse--it features heirloom seeds raised by about 1,000 gardeners and farmers who offer their seeds directly to the exchange's other 7,000 members.

The exchange defines an heirloom as seeds grown and passed from generation to generation as opposed to hybrids whose seeds either can be sterile or can produce plants that look nothing like their parent.

The nonprofit exchange, in Decorah, Iowa, was founded in 1975 by Diane and Kent Whealy to keep these heirloom species alive. As fewer people farm, and seed companies continue to consolidate by scaling back their inventories, these rare heirlooms are the first to be lost. To survive, the plants must be grown to produce fresh, fertile seed.

To get the book, you'll need to become an exchange member. Memberships start at $30 and include the annual yearbook and a Summer Edition and Harvest Edition with articles on historic gardening, heirloom plant profiles, and more. Check out http://www.seedsavers.org or phone 563-382-5990.

Lisa Van Cleef is a gardening writer in San Francisco.