49 Fun Facts About Watermelon

Botanically, the fruit of the watermelon is classed as which type of fruit?

A berry: botanists call this hard-shelled kind a pepo, while strawberries and raspberries, despite their names, are not true berries at all.

After water, what mainly makes up watermelon flesh?

Carbohydrates, mostly sugars, make up about 7.5% of the flesh; with water at over 90%, a 100 g serving has only about 30 calories.

Genetic studies name the Kordofan melon of which country as the closest relative and possible ancestor of the watermelon?

Sudan: its Kordofan melon has pale but non-bitter flesh, and a 2021 genome study found it to be the closest living relative of the fruit farmers went on to sweeten.

In which 1987 film does Baby blurt out 'I carried a watermelon' after gate-crashing a staff party?

Dirty Dancing: Baby (Jennifer Grey) gets into the staff party by helping carry melons, says the line to dance instructor Johnny, then cringes at what she just said.

An image at least 4,000 years old of a large striped fruit on a tray, apparently a watermelon, comes from which civilisation?

Egypt: the tomb painting shows a big striped oblong fruit served on a tray, which a 2021 study reads as a sign it may already have been eaten as a dessert, though other research dates sweet watermelons some 2,000 years later.

Which American author wrote that anyone who has tasted a watermelon 'knows what the angels eat'?

Mark Twain put the line in Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar, adding that Eve cannot have eaten a Southern watermelon, because she repented.

Which people are credited with introducing the watermelon to the Iberian Peninsula?

The Moors are credited with bringing it to Iberia, which is why Spanish calls the fruit sandía, from an Arabic word meaning 'from Sindh'.

Native Americans were already growing watermelons by the mid-1600s in which future US state, then a Spanish colony?

Florida: European colonists carried the fruit across the Atlantic, and it was growing in Massachusetts by 1629 and far inland along the Mississippi within a few decades.

Which explorer is credited with introducing watermelons to Hawaii and other Pacific islands?

James Cook left melon seeds on the Hawaiian island of Niʻihau in 1778, as he had on island after island, and Pacific growers took to the new fruit quickly.

Which country grows about 60% of the world's watermelons?

China harvested about 64 million tonnes of watermelon in 2023, roughly 60% of the world total, while the United States ranked only seventh.

Which US state made the watermelon its official state vegetable in 2007?

Oklahoma declared the watermelon its official state vegetable in 2007, reasoning that it belongs to the cucumber and gourd family; Rush Springs hosts the state's annual watermelon festival.

Seedless watermelons are not genetically engineered but bred by crossing parent plants that differ in what?

Chromosome number: crossing a normal two-set plant with a doubled four-set one gives a three-set hybrid that, like a mule, is sterile and cannot fill its seeds.

Because seedless watermelon vines cannot fertilise their own flowers, growers must plant what alongside them?

A seeded variety supplies the pollen, because a seedless vine still needs pollinating before its fruit will swell, even though no seeds will form.

Roughly how many watermelon cultivars are grown around the world?

About 1,200 are grown worldwide, and not all are red inside: yellow- and orange-fleshed kinds lack the pigment that colours the usual sort.

The 'Densuke' watermelon, with its round fruit and near-black rind, is grown where?

Hokkaido, Japan: the melons come only from the town of Tōma on the country's cool northern island, and the first of each season are auctioned for hundreds of thousands of yen.

Japanese growers say cube-shaped watermelons were first developed to fit neatly inside what?

A refrigerator: the flat sides were also meant to stop the fruit rolling as it was cut, but at around 10,000 yen apiece the cubes became showpiece gifts instead.

Why are Japanese cube watermelons generally inedible?

They must be harvested before they ripen to hold the cube shape, so they serve as decoration; in 2001 they sold for about 10,000 yen, two to three times the price of ordinary melons.

Hope, Arkansas, birthplace of Bill Clinton, is also famous for what watermelon-related feat?

Growing record-breaking giant melons is a Hope tradition going back to the 1920s; the town's last world record, set in 2005, has since been beaten by a Tennessee grower.

The Watermelon Thump and its seed-spitting contest are held each June in Luling, an oil town in which state?

Texas: oil dominated Luling, but by the 1950s its farmers were growing so many melons that the town launched the Thump, still held on the last full weekend of June.

Viva la Vida, a still life of cut watermelons finished in 1954, was among the last paintings of which Mexican artist?

Frida Kahlo painted it in 1954, the year she died after a life of illness and surgery, and its title means 'long live life'.

The red pigment in watermelon flesh, also responsible for the colour of tomatoes, is which carotenoid?

Lycopene: ripe red watermelon holds as much of it as raw tomatoes or more, weight for weight, though the pigment is named after an old genus name for the tomato.

Which amino acid takes its name from the watermelon, the fruit it was first isolated from?

Citrulline is named after Citrullus, the Latin genus of the watermelon, yet your own liver makes it constantly as a step in turning waste ammonia into urea.

Watermelon belongs to the plant family Cucurbitaceae along with which of these?

Pumpkin: the gourd family also takes in squash and cucumbers, and the cantaloupe turns out to be closer kin to the cucumber than to the watermelon.

Which naturalist gave the watermelon its first formal scientific description?

Carl Linnaeus described it in 1753, but the species name used today was first given to a different South African melon, a mix-up exposed when DNA from the 1773 type specimen was tested.

The wild tsamma melon long supplied water to San hunter-gatherers and travellers in which desert?

The Kalahari: David Livingstone wrote that in rainy years vast tracts of the desert were 'literally covered' with the melons, which people and animals alike relied on for water.

Which gemstone has a prized 'watermelon' variety, pink in the centre and green around the outside?

Tourmaline: crystals of the watermelon variety are pink at the core and green at the rim, so cutters slice them crosswise, like the fruit, to show both colours.

'Watermelon snow', the pink-tinged snow of high mountains and polar regions, is caused by what?

Red-pigmented algae: Chlamydomonas nivalis makes the pigment as a sunscreen, and the darkened snow soaks up more sunlight and so melts faster.

The 2020 hit 'Watermelon Sugar' borrows its title from a 1968 novel by which author of Trout Fishing in America?

Richard Brautigan's In Watermelon Sugar was lying around when the song was written, and its singer simply liked the sound of the title as a hook.

Which singer scored his first US number one in 2020, and a Grammy the next year, with 'Watermelon Sugar'?

Harry Styles opened the 2021 Grammy ceremony by performing the song, then collected Best Pop Solo Performance for it the same night.

The jazz standard 'Watermelon Man' was written in 1962 by which pianist for his debut album Takin' Off?

Herbie Hancock wrote the tune to help sell his first album, but it was Mongo Santamaría's cover that reached the US top ten; Hancock later remade it as funk on Head Hunters.

Comedian Gallagher's signature routine smashed watermelons with a giant mallet he called what?

The Sledge-O-Matic spoofed TV ads for the Veg-O-Matic food slicer; fans in the front rows wore raincoats or held up plastic sheets when Gallagher swung it at a watermelon.

In the 1970 satire Watermelon Man, a bigoted insurance salesman wakes up one morning to find what?

He has become Black: Godfrey Cambridge played the salesman, and the film's success brought director Melvin Van Peebles a three-picture studio offer, which he turned down to work independently.

For African Americans after emancipation, watermelons were originally a symbol of what?

Liberation and self-reliance: freed people grew and sold melons on their own land, and the racist caricature arose as a backlash against that independence, with perhaps the first example printed in 1869.

Egusi soup, thickened with ground melon seeds, is a staple dish of which country?

Nigeria: egusi melons are grown for their oily, protein-rich seeds, not their flesh, and the ground seeds thicken a soup eaten across West Africa.

What colour are a watermelon's seeds before they mature and turn black?

White: the soft pale 'seeds' in a seedless watermelon are just empty seed coats that never matured, which is why they are safe to swallow.

Which botanical term describes a plant, like the watermelon, that bears separate male and female flowers on one vine?

Monoecious, from the Greek for 'one house': with the sexes in separate flowers, pollen has to be carried from bloom to bloom, and a poorly pollinated flower gives a misshapen melon.

What is the condition called when a watermelon's flesh cracks apart inside as the fruit grows?

Hollow heart is blamed on poor pollination or on cold snaps and heat waves while the fruit forms, and the cracked melons remain perfectly safe to eat.

The watermelon emoji became a symbol of resistance for which Ukrainian region famous for the fruit?

Kherson is famous across Ukraine for its watermelons, so the fruit became a badge of solidarity while the region was occupied in 2022, until Ukrainian forces retook the city that November.

What colour does a watermelon's ground-contact 'field spot' turn when the fruit is ripe?

Creamy yellow marks the patch where the melon sat on the soil as it ripened; pickers also check that the curly tendril nearest the fruit has dried out.

In Vietnam, a watermelon is a traditional offering on the family altar during which holiday?

Tết: families set a watermelon on the ancestral altar for the Lunar New Year, and a folk tale credits the fruit to Mai An Tiêm, an exile who won back the king's favour by growing it.

'Green on the outside, red on the inside' makes the watermelon a symbol of which political outlook?

Eco-socialism: 'watermelon' began as a jibe from critics of the green movement, aimed at environmentalists they saw as green on the surface and socialist red underneath.

Old thick-skinned cultivars such as 'Tom Watson' are still prized for making what?

Rind pickles: a thick rind suits the Southern preserve, but it fell out of commercial favour, so seed for such old melons now circulates mainly among home gardeners and specialist seed houses.

The classic 1954 watermelon 'Charleston Gray' was bred at a federal vegetable laboratory in which state?

South Carolina: Charles Andrus bred it at a US Department of Agriculture lab in Charleston to resist disease, and its long shape and tough skin made it easy to stack and ship.

Which heirloom watermelon variety, introduced in 1926, has a speckled dark-green rind and spotted leaves?

Moon and Stars is named for the bright yellow spots on its dark skin, a scatter of small 'stars' and one or two big 'moons', and the same speckling shows up on its leaves.

Watermelon growers are advised to keep at least one of what per acre?

A beehive per acre is the rule, since every flower needs repeated bee visits to set a well-shaped fruit.

In the Japanese summer beach game suikawari, a blindfolded player tries to do what to a watermelon?

Split it with a stick: as with a piñata, the blindfolded player is spun round first and then steered only by the shouts of friends.

The pale-fleshed 'Cream of Saskatchewan' watermelon was brought to the Canadian prairies by immigrants from which country?

Russia: settlers carried the seed to the prairies, where its 80-to-85-day season lets the small round fruit ripen in cool summers that defeat most watermelons.

The Sandia Mountains, whose name is Spanish for 'watermelon', rise beside which US city?

Albuquerque: the name is usually put down to the pink glow of the granite at sunset, though another account links it to the gourds or melons grown at a nearby pueblo.

Which grape-sized fruit, also called the mouse melon, looks like a tiny watermelon but tastes tart?

Cucamelon: the vine is a cucumber-family plant from Mexico and Central America, and despite the name it is not a cross between a cucumber and a watermelon.