Fruit and vegetables may seem fairly uninteresting things when we consider getting our recommended five portions a day, or persevere with a helping of cabbage, or carrots when we would really rather not. If you thought there was nothing particularly interesting about these everyday foods, you would be wrong.
A mutiny during the vegetable delivery.
The mutiny on the Bounty, way back in 1789, happened during a vegetable delivery. Captain William Bligh had set out for the island of Tahiti on board the Bounty. The ship carried a cargo of breadfruit plants which were to be introduced to provide cheap food for slaves on the islands.
The mutiny stopped the delivery and the plants did not reach their destination. However, four years later Captain Bligh undertook the same voyage on board another ship and delivered the plants successfully. The fruit was not appreciated in the Caribbean and the islanders much preferred their traditional plantains, or small bananas.
Why Bananas don’t grow on trees.
Banana trees are not trees, although they look like small palms. They are giant herbaceous plants which means that they die back in winter. What passes for the ‘trunk’ of the plant is actually a bundle of very tightly wrapped leaf bases. Those banana varieties that have been developed to be eaten as fruit have lost the ability to reproduce. They have to be propagated by taking cuttings of the parent plants, or cloning, as they have no viable seed. (Other small bananas known as plantains and cooked as vegetable have hard pea like seeds.)
What makes chillies so hot?
The hottest of chili peppers gets its incredible heat from just 0.1% of the fruit. It’s the capsaicin that gives the burning taste. Chillies are the berries of capsicum annuum which is a member of the potato family. The different species include the small very hot types like red Tabasco pepper and large red and green sweet peppers. Crushed, dried, hot peppers yield cayenne pepper and sweet peppers are used to make paprika.
Why not have a loofah for dinner
The long, scratchy bathroom sponges that we know as loofahs can actually be eaten. Many people mistakenly believe that they come from the bottom of the sea along with sponges and things of that ilk. However, the loofah is actually a plant related to the marrow. It is of tropical origin and can be eaten when young. Apparently, the young, cooked fruit, tastes a little bit like marrow too.
The loofahs that are found in bathrooms are actually the fibrous remains of the fruit. The very ripe fruit is washed in running water until the outer wall and flesh of the fruit disintegrates and then the remains are cleaned and bleached. Loofahs have been used as filters in steam and diesel engines, in mats, shoe soles and gloves.
Eat your greens, they’re all the same.
What’s the difference between cabbage, cauliflower, kale, kohlrabi, broccoli and brussels sprouts? No, this isn’t one of those joke book riddles. They are actually all the same plant. These vegetables are all different varieties of one Mediterranean species called, brassica oleracea.
Over many centuries the different vegetables have been developed from the original wild plants. They have been selectively propagated by man. For example, the specimens with the densest flower heads evolved into cauliflower and broccoli, and those with the strongest bundles of winter leaves became cabbages. Those with the largest buds became brussels sprouts.
Strawberries are not a fruit.
In terms of botanical correctness, the strawberry is not a fruit. Fruits are actually seed-bearing structures which grow from a plant’s ovaries but a strawberry is just the swollen base of the strawberry flower. The real fruits of the plant are the tiny hard pips which are embedded in the outside of the red fleshy bit. Strawberries originated in the Americas and garden varieties first emerged around seventeen hundred in France.
