174 Fun Facts About Fruit and Vegetables

The 1893 Supreme Court ruling that tomatoes count as vegetables settled a dispute over what?

An import tariff: an 1883 law taxed imported vegetables but not fruit, so a New York importer sued to get his duties back, and the justices held that tomatoes are served with dinner, not as dessert.

The likely wild ancestor of the tomato, Solanum pimpinellifolium, is native to which region?

Western South America: the small-fruited currant tomato still grows wild in Peru and Ecuador, and breeders cross it into garden tomatoes to add resistance to pests and diseases.

Widespread infections of what forced the Gros Michel banana to be replaced by the Cavendish?

Panama disease, a soil-borne Fusarium fungus, wiped out Gros Michel plantations in the 1950s; its Tropical Race 4 strain now threatens the replacement Cavendish in the same way.

The Cavendish banana got its name from plants raised in the 1830s where?

A duke's greenhouse: Joseph Paxton, head gardener at Chatsworth House, raised a plant imported from Mauritius and named it after his employer, the Duke of Devonshire, William Cavendish, before stock went on to the Pacific.

Bananas are very slightly radioactive because of which naturally occurring isotope?

Potassium-40 is a naturally radioactive form of the potassium bananas are rich in, yet the dose is so small that it would take about 100 bananas to equal one day of ordinary background radiation.

Although it is often called a tree, the banana plant is botanically what?

A giant herb: the 'trunk' is a false stem of tightly wrapped leaf bases with no wood in it, and each one is cut down after bearing a single bunch so that a new shoot can take its place.

Botanically, a strawberry is not a true berry but what kind of fruit?

An aggregate accessory fruit: the red flesh is the swollen base of the flower, and each 'seed' on the outside is really a tiny separate fruit, an achene, with the true seed inside it.

The modern garden strawberry was first bred in the 1750s in which region of France?

Brittany: the garden strawberry, Fragaria x ananassa, arose there in the 1750s from a cross of the North American Fragaria virginiana with the large-fruited Chilean Fragaria chiloensis.

Pre-Columbian farmers first domesticated the potato in the highlands around which body of water?

Lake Titicaca: farmers on the high plain around it learned to freeze-dry potatoes on frosty nights into chuño, which the Incas later stockpiled to feed their soldiers and to tide people over after failed harvests.

Which plant family contains the genus Solanum, home to both potatoes and tomatoes?

The nightshades, Solanaceae, also include peppers, tobacco and deadly nightshade, and potatoes that have turned green contain the toxin solanine, which is why they should not be eaten.

What kind of organism is Phytophthora infestans, the late blight behind the Great Irish Famine?

A fungus-like oomycete: water moulds grow and feed like fungi, but their cell walls lack the chitin of true fungi and their kin are brown algae and diatoms, not mushrooms.

When carrots were first cultivated, which parts of the plant were they grown for?

The leaves and seeds: early growers wanted the aromatic foliage and seeds, as cooks still do with the carrot's relatives parsley, dill, fennel and cumin, and the fat sweet root was bred much later.

Growers in which country are credited with developing the orange carrot that became today's standard?

The Netherlands: early cultivated carrots were purple or yellow until Dutch growers bred the orange kind, a colour often linked, on thin evidence, to the House of Orange.

What was the real reason for the WWII RAF night-fighter successes credited to carrots?

Newly adopted radar: airborne interception radar let RAF night fighters find German bombers in the dark, and the carrot story gave that secret a cover; the night-vision myth has outlived the war.

Malus sieversii, the domestic apple's wild ancestor, still grows in which part of the world?

Central Asia: wild groves still grow in the Tian Shan mountains of Kazakhstan, and apples carried west along the Silk Road picked up genes from wild crabapples on the way to Europe.

Why are apple varieties grafted, not grown from seed?

Seedlings differ from their parent, and from one another, because every pip is a fresh genetic mix, so each Gala or Fuji tree is a clone grown from wood of the original.

The watermelon's closest wild relative, the Kordofan melon, grows on which continent?

Africa: a 2021 genome study found the pale-fleshed Kordofan melon of Sudan to be the watermelon's nearest kin, overturning a 90-year-old belief that it descended from a wild melon of South Africa.

Oklahoma's legislature gave the watermelon which official title in 2007?

State vegetable: the strawberry was already the state fruit, and the bill's sponsor, whose district around Rush Springs grows the crop, argued that it belongs to the gourd family.

Which state's official state fruit, chosen in 2009, is the tomato?

Ohio: the state named the tomato its official fruit in 2009, the same year it made the pawpaw its official native fruit, leaving it with two official fruits.

Which American scientist urged Southern farmers to grow peanuts and devised hundreds of uses for the crop?

George Washington Carver wanted farmers to rotate cotton with peanuts and sweet potatoes because years of cotton had worn out the soil, then found new products for the crops so growers could sell them.

Before 1959, what was the kiwifruit generally called in English?

Chinese gooseberry: the vine reached New Zealand from China, and in 1959 the exporter Turners & Growers rebranded its fruit 'kiwifruit' to sell it in the United States, where the new name stuck.

Dictionaries trace the word 'grenade' to the French name of which fruit?

Pomegranate: 'grenade' is the French word for the fruit, lent to the small bomb probably for its shape or its seed-like filling, and 'pomegranate' itself means 'apple with many seeds'.

'Avocado' comes from the Spanish 'aguacate', which in turn derives from which language?

Nahuatl: the Aztec word ahuacatl became Spanish aguacate, which was probably bent toward avocado, an old Spanish word for lawyer, before English speakers mangled it further into 'alligator pear'.

Which avocado variety, now the most widely eaten, descends from one tree planted by a California mail carrier in 1926?

Hass: postman Rudolph Hass thought of cutting the seedling down when his grafts failed, but his children liked its bumpy fruit; he patented the tree in 1935 and earned under $5,000 from it.

Because of its powerful smell, the durian is banned on some public transport in which region?

Southeast Asia: Singapore's metro bars the fruit, whose smell has been likened to turpentine, onions and gym socks, yet devotees prize the sweet, custard-like flesh inside.

What does 'duri', the Malay root of the word 'durian', mean?

Thorn: the fruit is named for its spiked rind rather than its notorious smell, and Malay adds the ending -an to turn the word into a noun, roughly 'the thorny one'.

Broccoli, cauliflower, kale and Brussels sprouts were all bred from which single plant?

Wild cabbage: growers selecting the same species for its flower heads, its leaves or its tight side buds turned one plant into vegetables that look nothing alike.

The Yubari King, sold in pairs at Japanese auctions for millions of yen, is a prized variety of which fruit?

Melon: grown in greenhouses in the town of Yubari on Hokkaido, the fruit is a favourite summer gift, and buyers bid up the season's first pair for the prestige of winning it.

Before pumpkins took over in America, Irish jack-o'-lanterns were traditionally carved from which vegetable?

Turnip: in Ireland faces were cut into hollowed turnips to frighten off the wandering soul of Stingy Jack, and immigrants to the United States switched to the pumpkins they found growing there.

Rhubarb leaves are poisonous mainly because they contain high levels of which substance?

Oxalic acid: rhubarb leaves hold enough of it to damage the kidneys, so only the stalks, technically petioles, are eaten and the leaves are cut off before the plant reaches the kitchen.

Forced rhubarb in Yorkshire's 'Rhubarb Triangle' is traditionally harvested by what light?

Candlelight: the roots are forced in heated, pitch-dark sheds, which gives sweeter, more tender stalks, so pickers work by candle to keep other light out.

Despite its name, what is the peanut botanically?

A legume: the peanut belongs to the bean family, and after its flower is fertilised a stalk called a peg pushes the ovary into the soil, so the pods develop underground.

The word 'eggplant', first recorded in 1763, was originally applied to cultivars of which colour?

White: the first plants given the name bore small, pale fruits shaped like hen's eggs, and the word then stuck to the big purple kinds too, while British English borrowed the French aubergine instead.

A gherkin is the small, immature fruit of which plant?

Cucumber: gherkins are picked small and young for pickling, and the word itself came into English from Dutch, where it already meant a little pickled cucumber.

Fresh pineapple stops gelatin from setting unless the fruit is first what?

Cooked: heat destroys the enzyme that cuts up the proteins gelatin needs to set, which is why canned pineapple, heated in the canning, works in a jelly where the raw fruit never firms.

The cashew shell's anacardic acid is chemically related to urushiol, the oil found in which plant?

Poison ivy and the cashew belong to the same plant family, and the oil in the cashew's shell can raise a similar itchy rash, which is why the nuts are sold already shelled and roasted or steamed.

Which US state is America's largest cranberry producer, growing over half the national crop as of 2024?

Wisconsin grew about three-fifths of the US crop in 2024, ahead of Massachusetts; at harvest the beds are flooded and the ripe berries float, so they can be scooped from the surface.

Maize was domesticated in southern Mexico thousands of years ago from which wild grass?

Teosinte looks so unlike corn, with a few kernels each sealed in a hard case, that its role was doubted for decades, until breeding experiments showed only a handful of genes separate the two.

Which fruit is the national fruit of India, Pakistan and the Philippines?

Mango: tradition holds that the Buddha was given a mango grove to rest in, and the Mughal emperor Akbar is said to have planted an orchard of 100,000 of the trees.

Why are potatoes left out of the 'five a day' count?

They stand in for bread: potatoes are normally eaten in place of bread, rice or pasta, so the NHS leaves them out, and the WHO advice behind the slogan likewise set potatoes and similar tubers aside.

The sweet orange is a hybrid of the mandarin and which larger fruit?

Pomelo: every sweet orange descends from one ancient cross of the two made in Asia, and the colour orange was named after the fruit, in the early 1500s, not the other way round.

Which fruit's juice carries warnings because it blocks an enzyme that breaks down many medicines?

Grapefruit juice knocks out a gut enzyme that normally breaks down many drugs, so more of each dose reaches the blood; the effect was found by accident in 1989, when the juice was used to mask alcohol in a trial.

On the Scoville scale, how hot is a bell pepper?

0 SHU: bell peppers carry a recessive gene that stops them making capsaicin, the compound the scale measures, so they score zero despite belonging to the same genus as the hottest chilies.

A true lemon is a hybrid of the bitter orange and which other fruit?

Citron: the lemon began as a cross between a citron and a bitter orange, and in 1747 the naval surgeon James Lind tested lemon juice on sailors with scurvy, long before anyone knew of vitamin C.

Which fruit, the largest borne on any tree, is also sold unripe as a meat substitute?

Jackfruit: the unripe flesh is mild in flavour and cooks into stringy shreds much like pulled pork, which is why it stands in for meat in vegan curries and barbecue.

The 'coco' in coconut is a Portuguese word that sailors gave the nut because its shell suggested what?

A grinning face: three dark pits at one end of the shell look like two eyes and a mouth, and coco was also a Portuguese name for a goblin used to frighten children.

Which insect enters a fig through the small opening at its tip to pollinate the tiny flowers inside?

A wasp: the female fig wasp often tears off her wings squeezing through the opening, lays her eggs, pollinates the flowers and dies inside, where the fig's own enzymes break her body down.

Popeye's spinach is popularly said to make him strong because it is rich in which mineral?

Iron: yet in a 1932 strip Popeye praised spinach for its vitamin A, and the tale that a misplaced decimal point inflated spinach's iron count is itself a myth.

Which plant family does the sweet potato, only a distant relative of the potato, belong to?

Morning glory family: the sweet potato's vine is a close cousin of the garden morning glory, and the orange 'yams' sold in American shops are really sweet potatoes, unrelated to true yams.

How is white asparagus produced from the same plant as green asparagus?

Grown under heaped soil away from light: with no sunlight the spears make no chlorophyll and stay pale, which gives the tender, milder shoots prized in France and Germany as 'white gold'.

Eating grapes or raisins can cause which serious condition in dogs?

Acute kidney failure: vets now suspect the tartaric acid in grapes, after dogs that ate cream of tartar or tamarind fell ill the same way, and its level varies so much that even a few can harm some dogs.

Why do Brussels sprouts taste milder than they did before the 1990s?

Selective breeding: in the early 1990s seed-company scientists traced the bitterness to particular compounds in the sprout, and breeders have been selecting varieties with less of them ever since.

Which Australian bush fruit is famed for one of the highest vitamin C levels ever measured in a food?

Kakadu plum: this fruit of Australia's tropical north holds dozens of times the vitamin C of an orange, a vitamin people must get from food because, unlike most animals, humans cannot make their own.

Why is a picked raspberry hollow, unlike a blackberry?

The central torus stays on the plant, so a ripe raspberry slips off at a gentle pull, which is how pickers know it is ready, while a blackberry keeps its core.

Methuselah, grown from a 2,000-year-old seed found in Israel, is what kind of tree?

Date palm: Methuselah sprouted in 2005 from a seed excavated at Masada; six more ancient date seeds have since germinated, and male Methuselah pollinated the female Hannah, which bore dates in 2020.

Ruby Roman, a red Japanese luxury fruit auctioned for over a million yen, is a variety of what?

Grape: Ishikawa prefecture bred the variety in a state-led project begun in the mid-1990s, each berry nearly the size of a ping-pong ball, and at its 2008 debut the top bunch fetched 100,000 yen.

Papain, a papaya enzyme, is an active ingredient in what?

Meat tenderiser: papain, found in the latex of the unripe fruit, cuts the long protein chains that make meat tough into shorter fragments.

Which goddess of Greek myth was bound to the underworld each year by eating pomegranate seeds?

Persephone had tasted the food of the dead, so she must go back below for part of each year, and while she is gone her grieving mother Demeter lets the earth lie barren: the myth's account of the seasons.

Commercial blueberries, both lowbush and highbush, are native to which continent?

North America: the wild bushes were first tamed in New Jersey in the 1910s, when a cranberry grower's daughter paid local people to find the plants with the biggest berries for a government botanist to breed.

Kirsch, the clear brandy stirred into Swiss cheese fondue, is distilled from which fruit?

Cherry: the whole fermented mash goes into the still, stones and all, and the crushed stones give kirsch its bitter-almond note; its German name, Kirschwasser, means 'cherry water'.

Nectarines are glossy-skinned, non-fuzzy varieties of which fruit species?

Peach: one recessive gene for smooth skin is all that separates the two, so a peach tree will now and then sprout a branch that bears nectarines.

Which fruit, with rough pink-red skin and translucent white flesh, has been grown in China since at least the 11th century?

Lychee: by 1059 the fruit was so prized in Song-dynasty China that the scholar Cai Xiang devoted a whole treatise to it.

Dragon fruit is the fruit of what kind of plant?

A cactus: dragon fruit, or pitaya, grows on climbing cacti from the Americas, and its flowers open at night, when bees are not flying, which suits moths and bats instead.

Botanically, the olive is classed as what type of fruit?

A drupe: the olive has a fleshy layer around a single hard stone, like a cherry or peach; the word 'oil' itself comes from the Latin oleum, originally meaning olive oil.

Why are freshly picked olives nearly always cured before eating?

They contain bitter oleuropein: the compound makes a raw olive almost inedible, so the fruit is cured in lye for a few days or in brine for months to draw it out.

Which acid gives lemon juice its sour taste?

Citric acid: it was first isolated from lemon juice in 1784, but industry now makes it without lemons, by fermenting sugar with the mould Aspergillus niger.

Which hard, golden-yellow pome fruit is the sole member of the genus Cydonia?

Quince: too hard and astringent to enjoy raw, it is cooked into preserves, and the word marmalade itself comes from marmelo, the Portuguese for quince.

Fuyu and Hachiya are cultivars of which East Asian fruit?

Persimmon: the squat Fuyu can be eaten while still crisp, but the Hachiya is mouth-puckeringly astringent until it has turned completely soft.

Which alcoholic drink, made much like cider, is fermented from pears instead of apples?

Perry: its name goes back to pirum, the Latin for pear, and makers press small, bitter perry pears much as cidermakers use cider apples rather than eating ones.

Swiss chard and mangelwurzel are cultivars of the same subspecies as which root vegetable?

Beetroot: chard, mangelwurzel and sugar beet are all forms of the same plant, and when a British blockade cut off cane sugar, Napoleon had beet-sugar factories set up across France.

The edible artichoke is a cultivated variety of what type of plant?

Thistle: the globe artichoke is a domesticated thistle picked as a flower bud; left on the plant, the bud opens into a big purple thistle flower too coarse to eat.

The leek is one of the national emblems of which country?

Wales: in one legend a Welsh king had his men wear leeks in battle to tell friend from foe, and the daffodil's Welsh name, cenhinen Bedr, means 'Peter's leek'.

Okra, a relative of cotton and hibiscus, belongs to which plant family?

Mallow family: okra, Abelmoschus esculentus, sits in the Malvaceae with cocoa too, and the mucilage in its pods is what thickens a Louisiana gumbo.

Zucchini is known by what name in France and Britain?

Courgette: the French name is used in Britain for the immature fruit, while a zucchini left to grow large becomes a marrow; both names mean 'little gourd', from courge and zucca.

Which US state is home to Morton, the self-styled Pumpkin Capital of the World near Peoria?

Illinois: Morton's Libby's cannery packs most of America's canned pumpkin, which is how a town outside Peoria came to call itself the Pumpkin Capital of the World.

Which cream-coloured root, a close relative of the carrot, turns sweeter after winter frosts?

Parsnip: cold makes the root turn its stored reserves into sugar, so growers leave the crop in the ground until after the first frosts.

Celeriac is a celery cultivar grown for which part of the plant?

Its swollen root-like base: though often sold as celery root, the knobbly bulb is really a swollen stem base, the hypocotyl, and is eaten raw or cooked.

Dictionaries usually trace the word 'spinach' back to which language?

Persian: the usual account runs from Persian aspanakh through Arabic into Old French and English, and the plant itself is native to southwest Asia.

Which ancient civilisation held lettuce sacred to Min, its god of fertility?

The Egyptians: lettuce was the sacred plant of their god Min, though DNA evidence now suggests the crop was first domesticated near the Caucasus rather than on the Nile.

Which compound, formed when a clove is crushed, gives fresh garlic its pungent bite?

Allicin forms within a minute when crushing lets the enzyme alliinase reach alliin; it gives fresh garlic its bite, then soon breaks down into other sulfur compounds.

Ginger belongs to the same plant family as which two spices?

Turmeric and cardamom: all three belong to the family Zingiberaceae; in the 16th century the Spanish took ginger to the Caribbean, where it grew so well that it was soon being exported.

Which chickpea type, small and dark-coated, dominates production in South Asia?

Desi: the name is Hindi for 'native'; these small, dark seeds are the main chickpea of South Asia and Ethiopia, while the bigger, cream-coloured kabuli type cooks faster.

Which Roman family name is said to derive from the Latin for chickpea?

Cicero: Plutarch says an ancestor had a nose cleft like a chickpea, cicer in Latin, while Pliny held that Cicero, Fabius and Lentulus were named for the crops each family grew best.

The dense white edible head of a cauliflower is known as what?

The curd: it is a mass of flower buds that never opened, and growers often tie the plant's own leaves over it so that shade keeps the head white.

Brussels sprouts take their name from a city in which country?

Belgium: the sprouts have been grown there for centuries, and they ripen from the bottom of the stalk upward, so one plant can be picked several times over a few weeks.

The habanero pepper is named after which city?

Havana: habanero is Spanish for 'of Havana', yet the pepper is now grown mainly on Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula; it rates 100,000 to 350,000 Scoville units.

Which pepper, bred by Ed Currie, held the Guinness record for hottest chili from 2013 to 2023?

Carolina Reaper: Ed Currie's pepper averaged about 1.64 million Scoville units and kept the Guinness title until 2023, when his own Pepper X, at about 2.69 million, took over.

Capsaicin is concentrated most heavily in which part of a chili pepper?

The white pith: this spongy tissue holding the seeds carries the highest concentration of capsaicin, while the seeds, so often blamed, produce none at all.

Wasabi is grown for which part of the plant?

Its rhizomes: the thick green rhizome is grated fresh into a paste, while the substitute common outside Japan is a blend of horseradish, mustard and green colouring.

Horseradish, mustard and wasabi all belong to which plant family?

Brassicaceae: the mustard family is also called Cruciferae, 'cross-bearing', because each flower has four petals set in the shape of a cross.

The Granny Smith apple originated in 1868 in which country?

Australia: Maria Ann Smith propagated the apple from a chance seedling at her orchard in Eastwood, near Sydney, in 1868.

The Red Delicious apple, first named Hawkeye, began as a chance seedling in which US state?

Iowa: farmer Jesse Hiatt is said to have cut the stray seedling down twice before letting it grow; Stark Brothers later bought the rights and renamed his Hawkeye the Delicious.

The Honeycrisp apple was developed at a university research center in which US state?

Minnesota: University of Minnesota breeder David Bedford pulled the seedling, MN 1711, off the reject pile in 1982; released in 1991, it became the state fruit in 2006.

What was the real name of the pioneer nurseryman known as Johnny Appleseed?

John Chapman, born in Massachusetts in 1774, gathered apple seeds from cider presses and planted nurseries across the frontier, selling the seedlings to the pioneers who followed.

Vidalia onions are grown in a legally defined area of which US state?

Georgia: Vidalia onions may only be grown in a 20-county area of south Georgia defined by state law in 1986 and a federal marketing order; their sweetness comes from the low-sulfur local soil.

Which onion relative was demoted from its own species to a cultivar group of Allium cepa?

Shallot: long classed as Allium ascalonicum, it is now treated as a group within the onion species; its name, like 'scallion', goes back to the ancient city of Ascalon.

In 2008, researchers in which country created 'no tears' onions by genetic modification?

New Zealand: scientists at Crop & Food Research in Christchurch silenced the gene for lachrymatory factor synthase, the enzyme that makes the tear-inducing compound, announcing the onion in 2008.

Bell peppers, jalapeños and cayennes all belong to which species?

Capsicum annuum: one species, first domesticated in Mexico, gives bell peppers, jalapeños and cayennes alike, and none is related to black pepper, Piper nigrum, despite the name.

A currant, as sold in baking, is a dried version of which small grape?

Black Corinth: baking's 'currants' are these tiny seedless grapes dried, and the word currant is itself a worn-down form of Corinth, the Greek city that exported them.

Which fruit did Columbus and his crew first encounter on the island of Guadeloupe in 1493?

Pineapple: the fruit so impressed Europeans that it became a symbol of hospitality, carved over doorways in England and, later, New England.

In 2024, which three countries together grew most of the world's coconuts?

Indonesia, India and the Philippines: FAO figures give the three more than 70 percent of the 2024 crop; a coconut's husk lets it float, so ocean currents as well as people spread the palm.

Which vegetable is the base of the smoky Middle Eastern dip baba ghanoush?

Eggplant: it is grilled over an open flame or hot coals until the flesh collapses, which is where baba ghanoush gets its smoky taste.

Improperly prepared cassava can contain poisonous levels of which substance?

Cyanide: cassava roots contain cyanogenic glycosides such as linamarin that release hydrogen cyanide unless the roots are peeled, soaked, grated or fermented; the starch is processed into tapioca.

Which root vegetable is called swede in British English?

Rutabaga: the North American name comes from a Swedish dialect word, rotabagge, while Britain's swede is short for Swedish turnip, so both names point to Sweden.

Kohlrabi's name, borrowed from German, joins the words for which two vegetables?

Cabbage and turnip: Kohl is German for cabbage and rabi goes back to a word for turnip, apt for a cabbage relative whose swollen stem looks like one.

Fennel and anise are two of the primary flavouring ingredients of which spirit?

Absinthe: grand wormwood, green anise and fennel are its core botanicals, and oils from the anise and fennel are what turn the green spirit cloudy when water is added.

Star fruit is known by what other name?

Carambola: the name came into English from Portuguese; the fruit carries a neurotoxin that healthy kidneys clear, so people with kidney disease are told to avoid it.

The name rambutan comes from a Malay word meaning what?

Hair: rambut is the Malay word for hair, a nod to the soft, hair-like spines that cover the fruit's red rind.

In 1789 which ship, carrying breadfruit saplings from Tahiti, was seized by mutineers?

HMS Bounty: William Bligh was transporting breadfruit saplings from Tahiti to feed enslaved workers in the West Indies when Fletcher Christian's mutineers seized the ship in April 1789.

Which term do botanists use for fruits such as watermelons and cucumbers?

Pepo: it is a berry with a hard rind, the fruit of the gourd family, and the word shares its Greek root, pepon, 'ripe', with pumpkin.

Tangerines, clementines and satsumas are all varieties of which citrus?

Mandarin: tangerines, clementines and satsumas are all mandarin types, and the wild mandarin is one of the few ancestral species behind the sweet orange and most other citrus.

Which citrus was discovered growing at a French missionary's orphanage in Algeria?

Clementine: the chance seedling turned up in the garden of Brother Clément Rodier's orphanage at Misserghin, so the new fruit was named in his honour.

A prune is a dried version of which fruit?

Plum: only certain varieties qualify, those that can be dried without spoiling, and 'prune' itself is simply the old Latin word for plum.

Sweet corn is the result of a natural mutation affecting the conversion of sugar into what?

Starch: the sugary (su) mutation slows the kernel's conversion of sugar into starch, so sweet corn is picked immature at the 'milk stage', unlike field corn harvested dry.

Edamame is a dish of immature beans of which plant?

Soybean: edamame are green soybeans boiled or steamed in the pod; the Japanese name means 'stem beans', because they were sold still on the branch.

Which tart green fruit is the base of Mexican salsa verde?

Tomatillo: despite a Spanish name meaning 'little tomato', it is a ground cherry, wrapped in a papery husk like its cousin the Cape gooseberry, and was grown in Mexico long before the Spanish came.

Nopales, eaten in Mexican cuisine, are the pads of which type of plant?

Prickly pear cactus: nopales are its flat young pads, sold with the spines scraped off; in Aztec legend an eagle perched on one marked the site of Tenochtitlan, the scene on Mexico's flag.

The Jerusalem artichoke is actually a species of which plant?

Sunflower: the Jerusalem artichoke is Helianthus tuberosus, a North American sunflower grown for its knobbly tuber; 'Jerusalem' is thought to be a garbling of girasole, Italian for sunflower.

The passion fruit vine, Passiflora edulis, is native to which part of the world?

Southern Brazil to northern Argentina: the vine grows wild there and across Paraguay, yet once planted in Hawaiian gardens it escaped into the forests and now grows wild across the islands.

The common guava, a relative of cloves and eucalyptus, belongs to which plant family?

Myrtle family: the guava, Psidium guajava, is a Myrtaceae, and its fruit is so rich in pectin that it sets readily into jelly and the firm guava pastes of Latin America.

Missionaries named the passion fruit's flower as a teaching aid for which biblical story?

The crucifixion of Christ: they read the flower part by part, its fringed corona as the crown of thorns, its three styles as the nails and its five stamens as the five wounds.

Blackcurrants were banned across the US for much of the 20th century as a carrier of which disease?

White pine blister rust: the fungus Cronartium ribicola needs a Ribes plant such as blackcurrant as an alternate host, so a federal ban protected timber pines until 1966, with some state bans lasting decades longer.

Which fast-growing vegetable, a favourite for children's gardens, can be ready to eat a month after sowing?

Radish: its seed sprouts in three or four days and small varieties are ready in about four weeks, quick enough to squeeze a crop into gaps between slower vegetables.

The pawpaw, a fruit native to the eastern United States, belongs to which plant family?

Custard apple family: the pawpaw is a rare temperate member of the mostly tropical Annonaceae, kin to the cherimoya, with soft, custard-like flesh that tastes of banana.

A 1981 Reagan-era school-lunch plan was widely mocked as counting which condiment as a vegetable?

Ketchup was never actually named in the rules, which cited pickle relish as a possible vegetable. The backlash was so sharp that the plan was withdrawn within weeks.

A European Union directive counts carrots as fruit so that Portuguese producers can keep making them into what?

Jam may be made only from fruit under EU rules, so the directive simply lists carrots as fruit. That keeps Portugal's sweet doce de cenoura legal.

Which weapon takes its name from the French word for pomegranate, a fruit crammed with seeds?

Grenade is simply French for pomegranate. The many-seeded fruit suggested a small shell packed with powder that bursts into fragments.

British sailors became 'limeys' after the Royal Navy added citrus juice to their rum to prevent which disease?

Scurvy was the target, yet the famous limes worked poorly. The Navy had first used lemons, and limes turned out to carry only about half as much vitamin C.

Compared with the red bell peppers sold beside them, most green bell peppers are simply what?

Picked unripe is the whole difference: left on the plant, a green bell pepper ripens to red. The Permagreen variety is the exception, staying green even when fully ripe.

The dense green head of broccoli, a close cousin of cauliflower, is made up mostly of what?

Flower buds form the head, which is cut by hand while they are still tightly closed. Left any longer, they open into small yellow blooms.

Gregor Mendel worked out the basic laws of heredity in a monastery garden by cross-breeding which vegetable?

Peas made the pattern visible because traits such as seed shape and flower colour are easy to tell apart. Mendel raised some 28,000 plants between 1856 and 1863.

Chili plants are called 'peppers' because which explorer's crew found them as pungent as black pepper?

Columbus and his crew met the fiery fruits in the Caribbean and called them pimientos, borrowing the name of the black spice they already knew.

La Tomatina, a festival where thousands pelt each other with overripe tomatoes, takes place in which country?

Spain stages it each August in the small Valencian town of Buñol. The crowds grew so large that in 2013 it became a ticketed event for no more than 20,000 people.

A sliced apple or avocado turns brown because enzymes in the exposed flesh react with which gas?

Oxygen is essential to the browning reaction. That is why food packers slow it by vacuum-sealing cut fruit or replacing the air with other gases.

Rhubarb is baked into pies like a fruit, but it is a vegetable because cooks use which part of the plant?

The leaf stalks are the only part eaten, usually cooked with sugar. Pies made rhubarb so familiar in 19th-century America that cookbooks simply called it 'pie plant'.

Botanists define a fruit as the seed-bearing structure that develops from which part of a flower?

The ovary ripens into the fruit after the plant has flowered. By that test a tomato and a pumpkin are both fruits, however they are cooked.

Which US state settled the fruit-or-vegetable argument by naming its pink tomato as both in a single law?

Arkansas took both sides: the South Arkansas Vine Ripe Pink Tomato is its state fruit and its state vegetable, the law citing the botanical and the culinary view alike.

The potato grows underground but is not a root; botanists class it as which kind of swollen stem?

Tuber is the word for it. Left exposed to light, a potato's skin and sprouts can build up enough natural toxins to become harmful.

The banana plant looks like a tree but has no woody trunk, making it the world's largest what?

A herb it is: the 'trunk' is a pseudostem of tightly packed leaf sheaths. That makes the banana the largest herbaceous flowering plant on Earth.

Which gas, given off by ripening bananas, makes other fruit stored in the same bowl ripen faster?

Ethylene is a natural plant hormone. Shippers exploit it by harvesting bananas green and exposing them to the gas on arrival, so they turn yellow on schedule.

Vanilla pods, pollinated by hand on most plantations, are the fruit of which kind of flowering plant?

An orchid bears every vanilla pod. The hand-pollination trick still used today was worked out in 1841 by Edmond Albius, a 12-year-old enslaved boy on Réunion.

Earl Grey tea gets its distinctive perfume from the peel oil of which sour citrus fruit?

Bergamot is grown on such a scale around Reggio di Calabria in southern Italy that the fruit has become a symbol of the city.

Cranberry growers flood their beds with water at harvest time because the loosened berries do what?

They float, so the whole crop can be corralled into a corner of the bed and pumped out. A small share of the American crop is still picked dry instead.

Which 16th-century Italian painter is best known for portraits of human heads built from fruit and vegetables?

Arcimboldo was court portraitist to three Holy Roman Emperors in Vienna and Prague, where his odd heads of produce were enjoyed as curiosities.

Which small oval citrus fruit is often eaten whole because its skin is sweeter than its sharp flesh?

Kumquat turns the usual citrus rule inside out: the pulpy skin is the sweet part and the flesh is sour. Its name borrows the Cantonese word gām, meaning golden.

Which starchy tropical crop is steamed and mashed with water to make poi, a staple food of Hawaii?

Taro is called kalo in Hawaiian, and poi commands respect: by ancient custom, no fighting is allowed while a bowl of it is open.

Which fruit, toxic until its pod splits open on the tree, is paired with saltfish in Jamaica's national dish?

Ackee is Jamaica's national fruit as well, and once cooked its creamy yellow flesh has the look and texture of scrambled eggs.

Which sour brown pod fruit from a tropical African tree gives Worcestershire sauce part of its tang?

Tamarind pulp also sharpens HP Sauce, chutneys and curries, and it is sweetened into the syrupy drink called sharbat.

Which tropical fruit hides tangerine-like snow-white segments inside a thick, inedible deep-purple rind?

Mangosteen gives away its contents: the number of lobes on the little rosette at one end of the rind exactly matches the number of segments inside.

Salak, which grows on a palm native to Java and Sumatra, gets which English nickname from its scaly reddish-brown skin?

Snake fruit grows in tight clusters at the very base of the palm, and its snakeskin-like peel is pulled off before eating.

Which fragrant citrus fruit splits into finger-like sections and contains no pulp or juice at all?

Buddha's hand is prized for scent rather than flavour: in East Asia the fruit perfumes rooms and clothing, and it is given as a temple offering.

Which small translucent Asian fruit with a dark seed has a Chinese name that literally means 'dragon eye'?

Longan earns the name once peeled: the black seed inside the pale flesh is said to resemble the eyeball of a Chinese dragon.

Which crisp white Mexican root, often eaten raw, grows on a vine whose seeds contain the insecticide rotenone?

Jicama is safe only below ground, since the rest of the plant is very poisonous. Traders carried it across the Pacific from Mexico, and it now fills Asian salads and spring rolls.

Which scaly green fruit with soft, creamy flesh did Mark Twain call 'the most delicious fruit known to men'?

Cherimoya won Twain's praise in 1866. Long grown in the Andes, the fruit is now thought to have originated in the mountains of Honduras and Guatemala.

Brussels sprouts, whose cultivar group name means 'bud-bearing', grow on the plant in which way?

Along a tall stem is right: the sprouts spiral up a thick trunk-like stem that can reach 120 cm, maturing over several weeks from the bottom upward.

Kale and Brussels sprouts are both said to taste sweeter after the plants have been through which weather?

A hard frost holds no fear for kale, which thrives in wintertime and can survive temperatures as low as −15 °C.

Gimjang, a communal Korean tradition as winter approaches, sees families prepare large quantities of which food?

Kimchi is made fresh from seasonal vegetables in summer, but for about a month in late autumn households prepare enough to last throughout the winter.

Which crinkly-leaved winter cabbage is named after a historic Alpine region?

Savoy gets the credit in English, but Italians call the same vegetable cavolo di Milano or cavolo lombardo, after Milan and Lombardy.

Which leafy winter green is eaten in the American South on New Year's Day to bring wealth in the year ahead?

Collard greens belong to a group botanists call Acephala, Greek for 'without a head', because the leaves never close into a tight ball as a cabbage's do.

Which long white East Asian winter root has a Japanese name that literally means 'big root'?

Daikon is the hidden ingredient of Singapore's 'carrot cake', a street-food favourite that contains no carrot at all.

What do vegetable growers call the spring weeks when winter crops have run out and summer ones are not yet ready?

The hungry gap is familiar enough to have named a plant: one variety of kale that crops during those weeks is itself called 'Hungry Gap'.

Radicchio, the bitter red-and-white leaf of Italian winter salads, is a cultivated form of which plant?

Chicory in this form owes its colour to a trick devised in 1860: the plants are lifted and kept in darkened sheds, which gives dark red leaves with white veins.

Which tan-skinned winter squash with orange flesh was developed in 1944 by Charles Leggett of Stow, Massachusetts?

Butternut is botanically a fruit, strictly speaking a berry, even though cooks roast, mash and purée it into winter soups like any vegetable.

Which slender winter root is nicknamed the oyster plant because its mild flavour is likened to shellfish?

Salsify tastes mild when raw, somewhere between asparagus and oysters, and it collects odd names: it is also called Jerusalem star and goatsbeard.

The Sugar Plum Fairy rules the Land of Sweets, where Clara and her Prince are welcomed, in which ballet?

The Nutcracker's sugar plums held no plum at all: they were comfits, hard sweets built up in layers of sugar around a seed, nut or spice.

Which nursery-rhyme boy sat in a corner, 'put in his thumb and pulled out a plum'?

Little Jack Horner was linked in the 19th century to a real Thomas Horner, a Tudor steward whose dishonest dealings the rhyme was claimed to mock.

Plum pudding, which contains raisins rather than plums, is the traditional British dessert of which holiday?

Christmas pudding kept its older name because 'plum' was the everyday word for a raisin until the 18th century.

Professor Plum, an absent-minded academic with a purple playing piece, is a suspect in which board game?

Clue is known as Cluedo in Britain, where it was devised in 1943 by Anthony Pratt, an English musician who first called his game Murder.

Pluots, developed in the late 20th century by breeder Floyd Zaiger, are hybrids of plums and which other fruit?

Apricot gives a pluot the smaller share of its parentage. Zaiger also created the aprium, which flips the balance and leans away from the plum.

Sloes, bitter wild relatives of the plum, are steeped with sugar in which spirit to make a red British liqueur?

Gin grows sweeter as the fruit matures in it, and the finished liqueur is far weaker than the spirit, at 15 to 30 per cent alcohol.

Which popular nut grows on a tree in the genus Prunus, alongside plums and cherries?

Almond 'nuts' are really the seeds from inside a stone fruit, which is why botanists say the almond is not a true nut.

The damson, a small tart plum, takes its name from which ancient Middle Eastern city?

Damascus plum, prunum damascenum, was the Latin name. One common theory holds that the fruit was first cultivated around the Syrian city and reached England with the Romans.

Which fruit brandy, distilled from damson plums, is a traditional spirit of Serbia and much of the Balkans?

Slivovitz takes its name from sliva, the old Slavic word for plum. In 2022 UNESCO listed Serbia's traditions of making and sharing it as cultural heritage.

Which dessert plum is known in France as Reine Claude, in honour of a 16th-century queen?

Greengage is the English name, taken from a Sir William Gage who is credited with introducing the fruit to England from France.