Yellow Eggplants, White Carrots, Seeds Everywhere
February 27, 2016 5:31 PM   Subscribe

What did common fruits and vegetables look like before domestication?

More plant domestication:
Timeline of domestication of common plants
Overlooked plants ripe for domestication
Previously on Ask: Images of Crops/Livestock before Selective Breeding
posted by Eyebrows McGee (25 comments total) 38 users marked this as a favorite
 
Kirk Cameron will be very upset.
posted by leotrotsky at 5:44 PM on February 27, 2016 [6 favorites]


Also previously, Illustrations of Carrots in Ancient Manuscripts
posted by timshel at 5:49 PM on February 27, 2016 [1 favorite]


A cool crop domestication fact: rye and oats began as weeds growing among wheat crops, but through generations of a artificial selection pressure known as Vavilovian Mimicry they evolved to become the crops we know today.
posted by leotrotsky at 5:52 PM on February 27, 2016 [39 favorites]


Wow, that IS a cool fact, now everyone I know is going to have to hear about Vavilovian Mimicry in all social situations for the next two weeks.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 5:57 PM on February 27, 2016 [25 favorites]


I feel like the first article was talking about the versions of produce from fifty years ago, the ones that you couldn't get out of season, shipped from across the world without bruising, or picture-perfect every time. (I personally would love to try an "heirloom" banana.)

That "See? You already ARE eating GMOs!" line has always struck me as ignorant or disingenuous. I can see enough shades of gray to draw a line somewhere between 18th century watermelon breeding by an Italian farmer and lab-coated Monsanto employees doing CRISPR gene splicing.
posted by supercres at 5:57 PM on February 27, 2016 [11 favorites]


Supercres: Starting about 60 years ago, one thing that they've been doing is to expose sees to radiation and then grow them in hopes of inducing useful mutations. That kills a lot of the seeds and induces a lot of useless or bad mutations, but they've also gotten useful ones that way.

Another stunt is to use chemicals like colchicine to induce polyploidy.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 6:01 PM on February 27, 2016 [7 favorites]


Wow, that IS a cool fact, now everyone I know is going to have to hear about Vavilovian Mimicry in all social situations for the next two weeks.

What if your knowledge of Vavilovian Mimicry becomes an example of Baader-Meinhof phenomenon?
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 6:03 PM on February 27, 2016 [8 favorites]


They looked like things animals ate.

Try the mastodon, it's hardly rotted at all.
posted by eriko at 6:32 PM on February 27, 2016


one thing that they've been doing is to expose sees to radiation

woah, scary! like, the kind of radiation that's in cell phones that causes brain cancer and bees to die?
posted by 7segment at 6:40 PM on February 27, 2016 [1 favorite]


Almost any produce you can buy at a grocery is a cultivar, the product of human genetic engineering...
posted by jim in austin at 6:57 PM on February 27, 2016 [1 favorite]


7segment: no, they usually use gamma rays.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 7:00 PM on February 27, 2016


I kinda wish they'd used broccoli as an example. And then used cabbage as an example. And then used kale as an example. And cauliflower. And collard greens. And Brussels sprouts. And kohlrabi.

Because all of them are brassica oleracea.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:17 PM on February 27, 2016 [7 favorites]


I remember reading not too long ago that the watermelon painting that they used is of an unripe domesticated melon. I can't find where I read that now of course.
posted by ArgentCorvid at 7:25 PM on February 27, 2016


The article mentions that suggestion, but points out that the black seeds imply the watermelon was ripe. Mind you, I've never cut into a really unripe watermelon, so what do I know.
posted by Joe in Australia at 7:30 PM on February 27, 2016 [1 favorite]


no, they usually use gamma rays.
You may not get better produce, but you could be turned into a Marvel superhero.

What about the rumors of the experimental farm near Chernobyl that's growing the next generation of irradiated foods...
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:51 PM on February 27, 2016


I love eating "old" fruits and vegetables that seem to be too niche to have this kind of work done on them. Things like medlars, Hachiya persimmons, weird date cultivars...never going to look pretty on the shelves, never going to ship well, whatever it is, it's fun to experience fruit as I have to imagine my probably-not-that-distant human ancestors did.

Of course, I guess I should never say never - when I was a little girl we classed pomegranates in the set of fruits that would never have widespread appeal because they were so much work to eat. But look at 'em now. I guess most people I know have never eaten a whole pomegranate off the tree, but anyone could tell me what they taste like. And I don't think in that case it was actually selective breeding that did the trick - just better processing and packaging.

It's breaking my heart right now that the once somewhat popular Dancy mandarin seems to be entirely unavailable in the mass market because less flavorful varietals with few to no seeds have supplanted it entirely. My mom still grows them so I get a few a year but I miss that sharp, tangy Dancy flavor dreadfully. That was the "tangerine" I grew up eating, but my daughter can't handle all the seeds. I grew up eating seedy citrus, seedy grapes, seedy watermelons, all home grown...but if you've never eaten around seeds in your fruit I guess it feels like a pain.
posted by town of cats at 10:41 PM on February 27, 2016 [3 favorites]


"I love eating "old" fruits and vegetables that seem to be too niche to have this kind of work done on them. "

We have backyard pawpaw trees, complete with carrion-fly-pollinated dead-body-smelling flowers, and they're delightful. They grow very easily because they're local, and you get to both eat and brag about eating pawpaws, which is also delightful. They're very hard to get even at farmers' markets because they're so soft when ripe.

If you happen to have a yard and have space for heirloom fruit trees, I strongly recommend it, it's an interesting conversation piece and a delicious one to boot. My experience with heirloom vegetables has been a lot more mixed; a lot of them are just fucking tricky to grow without modern selection and hybridization. (Except root vegetables -- carrots and potatoes and radishes and so on are just dead easy no matter what.) Heirloom fruits (including tomatoes) often taste BETTER than modern supermarket hybrids and are much more flavorful; heirloom vegetables often just taste DIFFERENT, and you're like, "Man, that was a lot of friggin work and a low yield-per-foot for lettuce that doesn't even taste very good. I'm going back to the modern stuff."
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:58 PM on February 27, 2016 [11 favorites]


I am so deeply jealous of your pawpaws. I'm here in Indiana, where they're native, and I've yet to taste one because they ship so poorly. I hear they really can be a pain to grow, not only do you get the stinky flowers, but you need both male and female trees to get the fruit, but they are just about the coolest fruit ever. Giant banana-mango tropical flavored fruit that's native? Yes please!

Native persimmons are also pretty cool.
posted by leotrotsky at 4:14 AM on February 28, 2016


My previous home had loads of fruit-bearing paw-paw trees, which I loved, and also loads of persimmon trees which I kind of liked in a philosophical way but practically what they did was drop huge piles of 99.96% horrible persimmons everywhere. The roads ran pinkish red in the great persimmon massacres each year. Once every couple of years you'd find one that was balanced between unripe Double Headed Axe of Astringency +5 and Mealy, Disturbing Mushbag. The occasional good one was actually pretty mediocre as a fruit but still felt like finding a winning lottery ticket. I think most of the good ones got hoovered up by the local possum and rodent populations.
posted by Wolfdog at 6:20 AM on February 28, 2016 [3 favorites]


I imagine a "Ripe Persimmon!" alert going off, complete with flashing light and WOOP WOOP noise, somewhere in an opossum den every time one of the damn things becomes briefly edible.
posted by Wolfdog at 6:21 AM on February 28, 2016 [4 favorites]


I bought yellow and purple carrots for a special occasion, paying twice as much as for orange carrots.

They didn't taste that good. Farmers are smart, and make us go.
posted by jb at 7:02 AM on February 28, 2016


"I hear they really can be a pain to grow, not only do you get the stinky flowers, but you need both male and female trees to get the fruit, but they are just about the coolest fruit ever."

You just need two trees -- they all have both male and female parts, but they don't open at the same time on the same tree to ensure cross-pollination. (And a sole tree WILL set fruit by itself, just not very much and not very often ... probably wandering flies are finding wild pawpaws some distance away and carrying small amounts of pollen.)

You do have to plant them super-young -- like as first-year trees -- because they have a really deep tap root (like a carrot or a dandelion) that resists transplanting and is difficult to move, and even then some of them will nope out because of the trauma of transplanting to the taproot. They also prefer shade their first 2-3 years. So the ideal thing to do is, if you have a tree you probably have to cut down in a few years, plant a handful of pawpaws under it and let them take advantage of the shade until the tree has to come down, and then the pawpaws get sun and you have a ready replacement for your tree. (They will also grow and fruit in permanent shade, just not as tall and fruity as getting sun after a few years.) We put chickenwire around the patch to keep rodents from gnawing on the tree trunk the first couple of years since they're such tiny little trees at first. But once they're established and they're two years old or so, they just kind-of do their thing. They're not prone to pests, they're not very bothered by rabbits and rodents once their trunk is thick enough not to bite through, deer don't browse on them, and their unripe fruit doesn't really get stolen. They're adapted to the local rain/drought cycles so unless it's a SUPER-drought we don't really worry. And the foliage and flowers are really interesting to look at, even if you don't do well on the fruit. You do have to wait a few years for fruit since you have to plant them so young, but it's a pleasant little garden tree!

(And they only stink for a week or so, and you have to be pretty close to smell it. Although it's SUPER FUN to trick your friends into smelling rotting-meat flowers.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:18 AM on February 28, 2016 [3 favorites]


Oh man, we had paw-paw and guava in my back yard.
As a gardener (though an inconstant one) and ardent weeder I recognize the early carrot as the type of weed I've thrown out many times. Does anyone have a line on the time scale for turning that ugly root into the shapely, colorful object we eat today?
posted by bird internet at 8:42 AM on February 28, 2016


Huh, those "old" eggplants are the kind sold all over markets in Togo (and much of West Africa I believe). They're bitter and taste like crap if you don't boil them for days.
posted by raccoon409 at 4:31 PM on February 28, 2016


we classed pomegranates in the set of fruits that would never have widespread appeal because they were so much work to eat

A co-worker of mine somehow Tom Sawyered her primary-school-aged daughters into juicing bags and bags of pomegranates from their trees. She then brought in lots of juice to share.

...I'm not sure what I did to deserve the people I work with.
posted by tangerine at 1:27 AM on February 29, 2016 [1 favorite]


« Older The Tuneless Choir of Nottingham   |   So THIS is what you do with a liberal arts degree Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments