Dr David Bradshaw, the founder of Clemson University’s Heirloom Vegetable Collection, has died, aged 81.
A professor of horticulture at Clemson, South Carolina, Bradshaw spent much of his life collecting and preserving traditional vegetable varieties. His collection is a rich record of the agricultural history of the American South, with varieties whose seeds and stories have been passed down through generations.
There are beans and peas, okra and butterbeans, some with histories stretching back to the nineteenth century. Willow Butterbeans, for example, had been in Bradshaw’s own family for around 150 years. Choppee Okra had been maintained by the Jacobs family of Georgetown, South Carolina, since the mid-1800s. Shantyboat Butterbeans recall the families who grew them along riverbanks during the Great Depression.
Bradshaw also served as director of Clemson’s South Carolina Botanical Garden for more than 30 years. He eventually entrusted his heirloom collection to the South Carolina Crop Improvement Association, which continues to maintain it.
You can explore Clemson’s Heirloom Vegetable Collection here.