> (note: botanically watermelons are vegetables, but culturally we eat them as fruit)
Wait a second, I thought it was the other way around, i.e. I thought that "cousins" of watermelons such as cucumber, squash or zucchini were botanically fruits but we ate them as vegetables. Otherwise, how come that we call them "fruiting vegetables"? Can someone with more knowledge than me, explain this?
That is correct. Vegetable isn’t really a botanical word since you typically refer to the specific parts of the plant (eg root, bulb, leaves, flower, fruit, etc). Vegetable is just a catch-all to cover “parts of the plant we eat”.
Fruits have a specific definition: the seed-bearing body of a plant produced by the ovary after flowering. I.e. if you have a flowering plant, the “fruit” is the part that contains the seeds.
... And the watermelon, like all gourds, is one of them: a plant cultivated only for its fruit. That appears to be a bug in the blog post. Some plants, are eaten both ways (both the fruiting body and leaves or other body parts are consumed).
With fungi we eat only the fruiting body, but nobody calls them “fruit” except in the superclass sense (“fruit of the land”)
We don't call them fruit, we call them mushroom. And they can't have fruits, as in pear tress or other angiosperm plants, because mushrooms aren't plants.
The fruiting body, which is not fruit, doesn't have seeds. They have spores, I think.
I think you are right. Vegetable has only a culinary definition, not a botanical one. And I don't think many people would classify watermelons as a vegetable, except that watermelon skins are sometimes used for cooking.
On the other hand, watermelons are definitely fruits, in both the botanical and culinary sense.
You can grill watermelons, mix them with sheep cheese etc. Watermelons are so much more than just a sweet snack if that's what you mean by fruits in the culinary sense.
Corrected:
"note: botanically watermelons, squashes, and cucumbers are all in the same family and are fruit, but culturally we use most of them as vegetables except for the watermelon"
It's a very deep rabbit hole, but apparently, vegetables are eaten as a main course, and fruit as a dessert.
I only even remember this because of an argument I had many years ago regarding whether a tomato was a vegetable or fruit. I chose the veggie side, but had no real evidence. Come to find out, after researching, the Supreme Court agreed.
It's all rather silly, honestly, but have a read for yourself on the background and decision.
Another fun brain bender you can drop on people at your next dinner is that bananas and tomatoes are both berries but strawberries and blackberries are not.
I think Wikipedia draws a good distinction here: culinary and botanical. So, banana is NOT berry in a culinary sense, and a strawberry is. Even if, botanically it’s the opposite.
I think it’s an important distinction because people using the term “berry” almost always are using it in a culinary context and not a botanical context.
No one wants a pie with fresh “aggregate accessory fruits”, just as much as no one would think it’s correct to call an eggplant tomato pie a dessert with “fresh berries”.
>I only even remember this because of an argument I had many years ago regarding whether a tomato was a vegetable or fruit. I chose the veggie side, but had no real evidence. Come to find out, after researching, the Supreme Court agreed.
Does anyone else remember when Congress told everyone that pizza was a vegetable? Haha. Good times.
Without meaning to defend it too much, as I believe it's mostly a marketting/lobying thing...
As I understand it, the issue was whether or not you could count a pizza towards your vegetable quota. The argument came down to the nutritional content of the tomato sauce on the pizza; nutritionally, this was very similar to the requirements for other things that can be classified as vegetables, and so one portion of pizza was deemed to also count as one portion of vegetables.
According to the late great Petey Greene on WDCA Channel 20, you have to pick it up just like this, and put just a twang of salt on it, and it brings out the accent:
>Petey Greene - How to Eat Watermelon (Enhanced): In this clip from civil rights activist Petey Greene's Washington DC television program in the Spring of 1982, Greene explains how to eat watermelon. Utterly bizarre. Also, pointers on eating corn and fried chicken.
Relevant comments:
>"man, some people just can't see the message. he's litterally saying 'watermelon is delicious, you're a fool if you change yourself because of what other people might think'"
>"I dont think people got the message he delivered. It was kinda about the watermelon but also more about how blacks are embarrassed to be themselves after so much stereotypes for doing things the way our people were accustomed to and for the same people(whites) we r trying to negate this stereotype to theyre "eating watermelon fred chicken and corn on the cob" the same way we shame our own people for being stereotyped for."
>"I pledge to live my life with the same passion as this man and his love for watermelon"
Check out his bio and the films based on his amazing life:
>Following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968, and during the subsequent riots that erupted throughout the United States, Greene made statements on air that were credited with helping quell the riots in Washington, D.C.
The article hinted to this toward the end but less water makes for better tasting watermelons. I moved from CA to NY and noticed that the watermelons were sourced from Florida when I moved. Watermelons from Florida taste so much worse than CA. Hit or miss on good ones, I’d literally throw out 90% of them (or blend for juice).
Something else I’ve noticed is that you basically can’t find normal seeded watermelons anymore. Do stores and growers not produce them anymore because they don’t sell? I miss how much better those tasted as well, and their shape. It’s interesting how the demand for certain types of produce in areas can make it basically impossible to get a variety. Most grocery stores now carry the same types of produce in the US, it makes for rather boring cooking (ignoring specialty stores and co-ops that are hard to find outside of cities)
It's because you now live 1,000 miles away from where they were grown. Fruit that needs to survive that much travel isn't going to taste very good because it needs to be harvested early and it needs to not be bruised when it finally gets to the store.
Nearly all your fresh fruit is going to suck compared to what you got in CA. The exceptions are going to be apples and cherries.
>> But there is a difference! Stuff shipped a long way costs more in shipping, so they'll ship the best stuff, because the can charge the most for it
This is not always true. If the "best" is delicate or easily damaged they sell it locally at a big discount and ship the tougher ones further. A good example is lobster; the best is sold cheaper near where it is caught while the oldest, toughest and most durable is shipped around the world at a huge premium.
It makes no sense in these terms I agree, but the produce in NYC absolute does suck compared to SF. And the restaurants likewise barely with dishes emphasizing vegetables either unless you shell out a lot of money.
As someone that's lived in Japan and France I miss good produce, something I rarely find in California (SF/LA). I get that California's produce might be better than the rest of the USA but it's only so-so compared to many other places.
Seeded watermelons have gone extinct in the mass market grocers in my area. They are available (when in season locally) at the co-op I shop at, as well as at farmers markets. I'm not sure if it is the fact that they are seeded or that they may be a variety that doesn't need to travel 1000 miles that makes them taste better.
It would help to make water more tradable in California and get proper prices. Right now, a lot of agricultural water is of the use-it-or-lose it variety.
I'm not sure about the situation in Israel. I know that Australia had some very good experience with water markets that helped them grow their agricultural productivity despite long droughts.
To downvoters of the parent, I’m all for equal access to water for people, but we aren’t talking about people, we’re talking about industrial water use, which is amazingly inefficient and a proper market for water would help here in the long run.
While traveling in India with our kids they were missing Halloween .... So, not able to find pumpkins in Kerala, we totally carved watermelons .... They work great, have a redder hue when lit .... but do attract a lot of ants
I'm convinced. Watermelons have a decently hard outer casing and make a great store for water. Here (South UK) we see quite a lot of rainfall and the climate is fairly gentle. If we could breed these things tolerant of lower temperatures then it could be a goer. That would be something else to see on a farm here: A plot of melons next to your Maris Pipers!
The climate is going to be getting wackier and wackier in future. I suspect we'll be seeing some pretty far out ideas becoming fact quite quickly. Large melons grown outdoors in British soil may not be the strangest. If this takes off, then Benny Hill's (RIP) spiritual successor will have material for years.
Back in the mid '80s I remember scrumping a few melons from a nearby plot in Cyprus. We lived in the WESBA (near Paphos). Teenage boys are pretty close to the bottom of the list of pests that afflict watermelons, so I don't feel too guilty. A freshly picked melon is a wonderous thing and there is so much water in them.
Now I really come to think about it, the more important melons become. The honey dew version must have quite a lot of sugar in it as well as moisture, again another useful trait.
We probably need a lot more melons. Ooo-er missis.
Hmm, I am not a botanist, but since watermelons have seeds, and botanically speaking seeds are in the fruit, aren't watermelon fruit botanically speaking?
AFAIK there is no botanical notion of vegetable. It's a culinary/food term, which should just mean "edible plant matter". Which would make culinary fruit just a subset of vegetables. But for some reason popular usage dictates that the category "vegetable" excludes some sweet tasting fruit, staple starches and some other things.
Seedless watermelons still have seeds, they just aren't mature when the fruit is ripe. This means they are smaller and are soft enough that eating them does not give crunch.
You’re correct, the author of the article was confused. Probably got confused because watermelon are related to crops that are culturally considered to be vegetables, like cucumbers. Another thread mentioned the same.
I always tease vegetarians by saying "Evolutionarily, fruits want to be eaten and that's why they taste good (so animals will spread their seeds around). Vegetables don't want to be eaten, and that's why they taste bad."
Watermelons definitely make more sense now as a water substitute than as actual fruit. It makes me want to grow watermelons for that purpose and juice them.
I got curious, could we make "underground irrigation" to reduce evaporation of water?
I mean, water underground is usually contained on a certain level (or levels), e.g. if there's a clay soil layer, then almost always there's water above it, because clay is hardly permeable by water.
We could make an artificial clay layer (or plastic or whatever that's hard for water to get through), at a depth of a few feet or meters. That way, water would evaporate way less than with open surface irrigation/watering.
With Drip Irrigation water would be allowed to sip deeper into the ground. What I'm thinking of is more like hydroponics, but with regular soil medium in a typical farm environment.
>endured a six-week journey on which watermelons were his sole source of water. The writer, Major Edward Keith-Roach, complained about being unable to shave during that trip but couldn’t praise watermelons enough for saving his life and making the trek possible.
Was this ever common to do, using watermelons as a potable water supply?
They used to be (and still are for some groups) a primary water source for certain kalahari foragers during the dry season. It's a pretty unusual cultural adaptation to an extreme environment.
Wait a second, I thought it was the other way around, i.e. I thought that "cousins" of watermelons such as cucumber, squash or zucchini were botanically fruits but we ate them as vegetables. Otherwise, how come that we call them "fruiting vegetables"? Can someone with more knowledge than me, explain this?