Wednesday, October 9, 2019

1748 Gourds for Seed Storage

Peter (Pehr) Kalm (1716-1779) Swedish-Finnish explorer, botanist, naturalist, and agricultural economist, visited America & wrote of a use for gourds in his 1748 diary. “They are particularly fit for holding seeds which are to be sent over sea; for seeds keep their power of vegetating much longer if they be put in calabashes than by any other means.”




Kalm, Pehr, 1716-1779. Peter Kalm's travels in North America; the America of 1750; the English version of 1770, rev. from the original Swedish and edited by Adolph B. Benson, with a translation of new material from Kalm's diary notes., Dover, 1966.