Ifirst visited Mexico nearly 30 years ago. Like so many I had always thought of Tex-Mex as Mexico’s national cuisine, but as I ate my way through the valleys and uplands of Oaxaca and the rainforests of Veracruz I was astounded by the unexpected diversity of fruit and vegetables. Many years later I learned, thanks to a meeting with a scientist from Kew Gardens, that Mexico, along with just a handful of other countries, is classified as ‘megadiverse’. While the UK has some 2,000 different native plant species, Mexico has 50,000 and it is this enormous range of herbs, greens, corn, chillies, squash plants, fruits and edible flowers that makes it such
