A cultivar of the famous Montreal melon was reintroduced into our gardens 30 years ago, but doubts persist about its authenticity… doubts that could soon be dispelled. First, with the help of a dozen seeds of the fruit with tender and sweet flesh that were reportedly found at the Musée québécois de l’agriculture et de l’alimentation in La Pocatière. Then, thanks to the Marie-Victorin herbarium, kept at the Montreal Botanical Garden, where two specimens of the plant collected in 1891 and 1894 have also just been spotted in the archives.
The Montreal melon made Quebec famous at the turn of the 20th century. Legend has it that a single slice sold for $1 in 1905 in major hotels in Boston, New York and Chicago. It disappeared from the fields around the 1940s and 1950s. But his aura persists to this day.
Sébastien Hudon was born and raised in La Pocatière, the gateway to Bas-Saint-Laurent. When he was appointed curator of the exhibitions at the Musée québécois de l’agriculture et de l’aliment a few months ago, he began putting together an exhibition on ancestral seeds which will be presented this summer starting June 20.
During his research, he found a magnificent synoptic table produced between 1938 and 1940 by an agronomy graduate named Maurice Couture. It contains 456 capsules of different varieties of seeds.
“It was restored just before I arrived at the museum,” says Sébastien Hudon. “I found it in the storage room in perfect condition, it had not even been unpacked […] My eye was immediately drawn to the squash-melon section and it was written: muscat de Montréal . I held myself back from dancing in the museum! »
It is difficult to determine when the Montreal muskmelon, also known as “nutmeg melon” and Montreal nutmeg, was introduced to the island.
Some sources attribute it to the Jesuits, other sources to the Décarie family, whose members cultivated it in the late 19th and early 20th centuries on their farmland located where it is today the highway that bears their name.
In 1997, Gazette reporter Mark Abley led a major investigation to find the missing fruit. He found 50 melon seeds from Montreal in a seed bank in Iowa. He gave a dozen to a farmer in L’Île-Perrot.
Conclusion of the experiment: “Each seed produced a different looking fruit. Most of them were quite small,” said the article in the English-speaking daily.
However, archive photos show a very large green-fleshed melon.
One melon tasted bland, another was torpedo-shaped, and yet another was long and thin. But one fruit was identified as having the potential to revive the variety.
From there, the seeds were distributed to many amateur gardeners keen to resurrect agricultural heritage.
Doubts were quickly raised about the authenticity of the seeds, because the fruits were small and often had a disappointing taste. Others remained convinced that they had the right strain and remained convinced that work on selecting the best fruits was necessary to restore the fruit to its former sweet taste. Agricultural techniques have also changed a lot. At the time, the crop was fertilized with horse manure. The fields were also located near Mount Royal, where the microclimate was conducive to its growth.
Despite this debate, affection for the Montreal melon continues.
“The Montreal melon is the starting point for a much broader reflection,” thinks Sébastien Hudon. “That of serious, curious people, who want to bite into a fruit like we did in the 1930s before the arrival of industrial agriculture. People who want to bite into a fruit that has the taste qualities, the texture, the full flavor and the profile that allows us to say: this is what connects me to my ancestor in terms of sensations. »
In his quest, Sébastien Hudon also contacted Étienne Léveillé-Bourret, curator of the Marie-Victorin herbarium. This vast collection housed in a building located at the Montreal Botanical Garden contains 650,000 dried plants.
In cabinet number 285, on shelf number 7, Étienne Léveillé-Bourret found two specimens of plants picked by Joseph-Célestin Carrier, a father of Sainte-Croix established at the Collège de Saint-Laurent, now the CEGEP of the same name.
“There are so many objects that we don’t have a complete catalog of what exists in the herbarium. That’s why when we found the specimen of Montreal’s melon potential, we didn’t know it was here! », says the man who is also an assistant professor in the department of biological sciences at the University of Montreal.
“From the look of the leaves, it’s still a little green, there’s a good chance it could give genetic material,” he assesses, showing the dried plant.
With the advancement of science, this discovery opens up many possibilities. With “new seeds which are potentially the Montreal melon, we could sequence what germinates from these seeds, compare it with plants which really date from the end of the 19th century and really look if it is genetically similar”, he explains.
Sébastien Hudon would like to sequence the DNA of seeds. He has already contacted a few researchers to start this project. He would also like to try to germinate Montreal melon seeds, but not right away.
The museum’s conservation room – located on the campus of Canada’s first permanent agricultural school, founded in 1859 – is full of Mason jars filled with heirloom seeds collected over the years.
With the help of the Biopterre research center, his team will first attempt to revive the seeds of a handful of other vegetable varieties by following a very strict protocol.
One variety is another melon: Golden Champlain, an orange-fleshed muskmelon cultivated starting in the 1930s.
An approach filled with hope, because the more the years pass, the less chance there is that a seed will germinate.
“Seeds, until proven otherwise, as long as they exist, they are viable. They are embryos waiting for the right moment to wake up and they can, in some cases, remain alive for hundreds or even thousands of years,” he explains.
If he succeeds in reviving the golden Champlain, the protocol could then be applied to the Montreal melon.
While climate change is disrupting agriculture, he believes that the golden Champlain is more interesting to reintroduce, because it is much earlier. It produces fruit after 55 to 65 days compared to 70 to 80 days for a traditional melon.
If the experiment is a success, the growing plants will be presented at the exhibition this summer. The public will also be able to follow the results remotely live on the web from the Biopterre laboratories.
Patrice Fortier, a seed artisan from Kamouraska who works as a consultant for the exhibition, keeps his expectations low, but finds the adventure very exciting.
“It’s a beautiful dream, it’s really a great exercise to do because there are treasures. There are varieties which no longer exist in there, which are no longer alive, varieties with very desirable traits according to what we read about them, but which, who knows why, have disappeared”, underlines- he.
He calls the potential discovery of Montreal melon seeds “extraordinary.”
“If these seeds ever turn out to match the description, it’s an immeasurable treasure,” he says. “Seeds, I see them as the basis of a country, the basis of a society. »
