Mammoth

Mammoth is a lettuce-leaf basil of Italian origin grown for one reason above all others: leaf area. Snake River Seed Cooperative measures the crinkled leaves at 4-5 inches long, big enough that Fedco recommends them for rolling or stuffing the way you would use a grape or cabbage leaf. Sources disagree about intensity, with Fedco calling the flavour similar to sweet basil while Wikipedia's entry describes it as stronger than Genovese, so it is safest to treat this as sweet-basil character delivered in an unusually large package rather than a genuinely different taste. Snake River grows its stock from seed originally kept by Joel Cutler in Salt Lake City. For anyone processing volume the appeal is simple arithmetic: far fewer leaves to strip for the same weight of finished pesto.