Mead in Poland which the 12th-century chronicler Gallus Anonymus described as "flowing with honey". This abundance of honey and a climate ill-suited for grape growing meant that mead was long more popular than wine. In 996, the Sephardi Jewish traveller Ibrahim ibn Yaqub wrote that "besides food, meat and land for ploughing, the country of Mieszko I abounds in mead, which is what the Slavic wines and intoxicating drinks are called". In the 15th century, the Venetian diplomat Ambrogio Contarini observed that "having no wine, [the Poles] make a certain drink out of honey, which intoxicates people much more than wine." The 16th-century
Theodore Luqueer Mead more attention of the breeding of amaryllis (hippeastrum), being greatly helped by Nehrling, who had a fine collection and allowed Mead to take what he wanted in the way of pollen for his experiments. Specimens with just a hair line color around each petal were intercrossed to produce nearly white varieties with a narrow border around each petal. His hybrid red and white striped ‘Mead-strain’ amaryllis also became the bulb of choice for many American southern gardens in the 1940s and 1950s. The American Amaryllis Society’s yearbook for 1935 was dedicated to Mead in recognition of his pioneer work with