Building on @ThomasPicard 's initiative to make a directory of seed sellers in Europe, there’s the obvious challenge of translating. Machine translations often works, but sometimes not. Thomas has added a column in the directory for people who can be of aid.
I’d like to propose collecting a list of names in this thread. Then members know who they can reach out to if they run into blocks when searching for seed sources in unknown languages. I think an overview and conversation about language barriers can also end up opening this community up to connecting with places, cultures, seeds and people that are currently not here.
Everyone’s welcome. There’s no reason to limit this list to Europe.
What languages do you speak and can be of service to the community with? Which languages do you personally miss or need someone to help you navigate? Post below and I’ll add you here for now.
Do we have anyone in our community who understands some of the languages in the South Eastern European part of the EU? Specifically Bulgarian, Rumanian, possibly Albanian (outside EU)
I’m trying to find diverse seed of Blitum bonus-henricus and the native range is the Eastern mediterranean and the Caucasus. My thinking is I could get more diverse seed if I could get them from countries in the Balkan, Rumania, Bulgaria and Greece (within EU).
Of course if someone is able to get seed from Caucasus, Georgia, Armenia etc would be even better.
I will ask my neighbour, who has an amazing garden and is also knowledgeable about herbs if she knows whether there is any Blitum bonus-henricus growing locally. It’s certainly a well-known food and medicinal plant in Bulgaria, but is native to the more mountainous areas, a long way from the plains my garden is in.
Blitum bonus-henricus is also part of our wild flora in the south west of France.
But yet as you point out there are no more varieties grown here than in your country. I think that this species has never been too domesticated and that you risk finding nothing more including further south.
On the other hand 100% agree with you that we must bring more people from the Balkans but also Greek, Turkish… who can bring us many good things with their very rich and passionate culture.
I can help with Croatian definitely. Also Serbian and Bosnian (those are very similar).
I’m not fluent in following but can get by:
Slovenian (Slovene?, as in from Slovenia)
Italian
I can read Greek alphabet but I don’t understand any of it (that happens when you learn ancient Greek for a year or two in school) - if that’s something any of you need at a certain point (it did came in handy when I travelled to Greece )
Late botanist knew of places in Denmark, where the good king Henry has a much better taste. As far as I remember, it was always near old villages or monasteries. There might be a living botanist aware of the places to look.
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