As the daughter of Italian immigrants, my family’s language, food and culture infused my upbringing. I grew up learning Italian and English simultaneously, since I lived with grandparents who couldn’t speak the latter; moving fluidly between two languages and two cultures. A saying I have often heard is that if you speak two languages, you are two people. Like many second-generation Canadians, this duality forms the foundation of my identity. 

Thinking about my family’s history with farming, it seemed natural to extend my botanical scanning work to the region of Le Marche on Italy’s Adriatic coast, where my family is from. In the medieval village of Montottone, my uncle and great-grandparents were the millers, while my parents and extended family were tenant farmers in the nearby village of Force. They lived off the food they grew and the animals they tended.

For many immigrants, the plants ...