This article traces the important botanical and culinary contributions of Philadelphia’s historic Landreth Seed Company, founded in 1784 by English-born David Landreth (1752–1828) and continued and enlarged by his son David Landreth II (1802–1880). The firm created a long list of American horticultural classics that are still being grown today, including Green Glaze Collards (1820), Jackson Wonder Bush Lima (1888), Bonny Best Tomato (1908). The family’s Bloomsdale Farm near Bristol in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, became the country’s leading producer and exporter of agricultural seeds, thus globalizing the Landreth contribution to world horticulture by the end of the nineteenth century. The company is still in business today, although under different ownership.
University of California Press