Illustration: The Thomas Laxton Pea
Gradus ad Prosperity, the Telephone, and the Thomas Laxton
Because most Americans now experience green peas from cans or from the freezer bag, and because breeders in the 20th century created peas suited to canning and freezing rather than fresh consumption, few know the minty piquancy of a fresh pea harvested from the Spring garden. Throughout the English-speaking world a kind of pea cult once existed: local growers held contests about who could serve the first plate of fresh peas. There once existed schools of flavor, some favoring wrinkled sweet peas, others the smoother starchier varieties. The first plate was always prepared simply, boiled in salted water with melted butter. The garden pea commanded such universal favor from 1750 to about 1920 that it was both a home garden staple and a market garden fixture. The oldest surviving pea varieties still cultivated—the Prussian Blue and the Marrowfats—have a meatiness to them. But breeders in the late 19th century began to imagine new qualities in fresh peas producing several broadly popular varieties—items that could be found in every garden catalog of the early 20th century. I want to speak about three that won the highest praise in America: the Gradus ad Prosperity, the Telephone, and the Thomas Laxton that were created by one supremely talented English gardener, Thomas Laxton (1830-1893).
First some catalog copy from a provincial seed house in rural Virginia to give you a taste of the enthusiasm surrounding these types:
Gradus ad Prosperity: “I consider this the best pea in the world for the home garden and the local market. It is not an extra early sort, but its products are far above those of any other variety. The vines are hardy and grow to a height of about three feet. The pods are very large, straight and slightly rounded at the point, averaging about four inches in length. The seed are large, wrinkled and of a cream color tinged with green.”
Historical note: The Gradus pea—named after the Latin word for “upward path” was one of the Laxton creations that collected a second name, “Prosperity,” speaking to gardeners’ hopes for the benefits of growing the variety. Rather than try to supplant one name with another, seed companies combined the names into “Gradus ad Prosperity” echoing the famous phrase that designated practice toward mastery in some skill, “Gradus ad Parnassum”—path to the home of the gods.
Telephone (illustrated above): From Slate’s Seeds Catalog 1919, South Boston VA: “This variety comes from the most populat strain of peas known to the seed trade, and I consider this the best of the strain. It is late, but very productive. The pods are of enormous size and well filled with large, wrinkled peas of the very best quality. Pods about five inches long.“
Historical Note: Known as the Alderman Pea in the UK, the telephone was introduced to America four years after the invention of the famous communication device by A. G. Bell. Curiously the image connection was the telephone pole, the visible sign of the presence of telephone service in one’s vicinity. The Telephone was a tall growing pea, supported by the tallest support poles in a garden, and the pea vines dropped with multitudes of fat pods. The sight was as memorable as a glimpse of one’s first phone pole in the late 1880s. The peas themselves were sweet, wrinkled, and rather moist.
Thomas Laxton: From Slate’s Seeds Catalog 1919, South Boston VA: Like the Gradus, this is an especially good variety for the home garden. In many respects it is better. It is earlier, harider and more productive, but I do not think that is products are of such good quality as those of the Gradux. More reliable than the Gradus. Vines grow to a height of about rhee feet and bear a heavy crop of larage, straight pods about three inches long.” (p. 38).
Historical Note: named after its creator, the Thomas Laxton pea, despite its inferiority in flavor and texture to the Gradus ad Prosperity and the Telephone, thrived in American fields because it would become a famous freezing variety