50 Fun Facts About Fruit

Which fruit gave its name to a colour that English speakers once simply called yellow-red?

Orange was a fruit before it was a colour: the shade took its name from the ripe fruit, and until the late 15th century Europeans simply called it yellow-red.

Which fruit do Spaniards eat twelve of at midnight on New Year's Eve, one for each bell strike?

Grapes are swallowed one per chime in Spain's 'twelve grapes of luck', each standing for a month of the coming year. The custom goes back to at least 1895.

Which botanical fruit, usually sold as a vegetable, do revellers hurl at each other each August in Buñol, Spain?

Tomatoes fly at La Tomatina, a street battle that began in 1945 and became a ticketed event in 2013 to cap the crowd at 20,000.

In American slang, a new car plagued by manufacturing defects is named after which fruit?

Lemon became the label for a faulty new car, and US 'lemon laws' can force the manufacturer to buy the vehicle back or exchange it.

Which fruit lends its name to the rude sputtering noise also known in America as a Bronx cheer?

Raspberry comes from Cockney rhyming slang, where 'raspberry tart' stood for 'fart', the sound the noise imitates.

Which fruit grows in a large hanging bunch made up of tiers that growers call hands?

Banana bunches carry around nine hands of up to 20 fruits each, and the 'trunk' they hang from is really a pseudostem of tightly packed leaf stalks.

Which fruit is traditionally served with cream to spectators at the Wimbledon tennis championships?

Strawberries and cream are so tied to Wimbledon that fans got through 34,000 kg of the fruit, with 10,000 litres of cream, at the 2017 tournament.

In Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, gum-chewing Violet Beauregarde swells up into which giant fruit?

Blueberry is Violet's fate after she chews Willy Wonka's experimental three-course-meal gum, and the Oompa-Loompas roll her off to the Juicing Room.

According to the Book of Genesis, Adam and Eve covered themselves with leaves from which fruit tree?

Fig leaves became art's standard cover-up as a result, and the edible fig may be the first plant humans ever cultivated, ahead of wheat and barley.

Which tropical fruit became a symbol of wealth in 18th-century Britain, where aristocrats raised it in greenhouses?

Pineapple growing cost so much in equipment and labour that the fruit became a status symbol, and pineapple figures spread through architecture as emblems of hospitality.

In Swiss legend, the crossbowman William Tell is forced to shoot which fruit off his young son's head?

Apple in place, Tell could redeem his life only by hitting it in a single attempt, and he split it with a bolt from his crossbow.

Which fruit's fibrous outer husk yields coir, the fibre used for doormats, brushes and rope?

Coconut fibre has been twisted into rope since ancient times, and the Austronesian voyagers who first domesticated the palm lashed their plank boats together with it.

The dip guacamole takes its name from Nahuatl words meaning a sauce made from which fruit?

Avocado is the āhuacatl in āhuacamōlli, the Nahuatl name behind guacamole, which literally translates as 'avocado sauce'.

Which fruit tree does young George Washington admit to cutting with his hatchet in Parson Weems's famous tale?

Cherry tree and all, the tale is counted among Weems's exaggerated or invented anecdotes; he credited it to an unnamed elderly lady who was a distant relative of the family.

Chef Auguste Escoffier created a dessert at London's Savoy Hotel to honour soprano Nellie Melba using which fruit?

Peach Melba began as fresh peaches over vanilla ice cream in a silver dish perched on an ice sculpture of a swan, a nod to the opera Lohengrin that Melba was singing.

In the nursery rhyme, which fruit does Little Jack Horner pull out of his Christmas pie with his thumb?

Plum in hand, Jack declares 'What a good boy am I!', and the rhyme, first mentioned in the 18th century, soon became shorthand for political opportunism.

Which sweet fruit do Muslims traditionally eat first to break the daily fast during Ramadan?

Dates open the evening iftar meal, traditionally three of them with water, in emulation of the Prophet Muhammad, who broke his fast this way.

Branches of which fruit tree wreathe the world map on the United Nations flag?

Olive branches cradle a world map drawn as if looking down on the North Pole, an emblem meant to stand for all the people and countries of the world.

In the carol 'The Twelve Days of Christmas', the partridge given on the first day sits in which fruit tree?

Pear tree and partridge may be a pun: one old theory holds that 'pear tree' is a corruption of perdrix, the French word for the bird.

Which tart red fruit is harvested by flooding its beds so the loosened berries float to the surface?

Cranberry beds are not kept under water all year, despite a common misconception: growers flood them at harvest and corral the floating fruit into a corner.

Which breakfast citrus fruit is the most studied cause of dangerous food interactions with prescription medicines?

Grapefruit was unmasked by accident in 1989, when researchers testing a drug alongside alcohol used its juice to hide the taste of the ethanol.

Which citrus fruit did the Royal Navy add to sailors' rum rations, earning the British a lasting American nickname?

Lime juice in the daily grog was meant to ward off scurvy, and the nickname is thought to have begun in the 1850s as 'lime-juicer' before shrinking to 'limey'.

Which thorn-covered fruit, the 'king of fruits', is banned by some Southeast Asian hotels for its lingering odour?

Durian carries the scientific name Durio zibethinus, from the Italian for civet, either because it smells like the animal or because civets were baited with it.

Japanese scientists created the first seedless triploid hybrids of which large, thick-rinded summer fruit?

Watermelon without seeds was slow to catch on because the early hybrids lacked disease resistance, yet by 2014 it made up nearly 85% of US sales.

Legend has Queen Victoria offering a reward for a fresh specimen of which Southeast Asian 'queen of fruits'?

Mangosteen earned Victoria's supposed hundred-pound bounty only in print: the tale traces to a 1930 book by fruit explorer David Fairchild, and no historical document backs it.

Marmalade is a citrus preserve today, but which fruit was it made from when England imported it in the 1500s?

Quince is marmelo in Portuguese, and marmelada, a firm, sticky, reddish paste of the fruit cooked slowly with sugar, is still made today.

Earl Grey tea is flavoured with the oil of which sour citrus fruit, grown on a large scale in Calabria?

Bergamot was first recorded in tea in 1824, apparently to lift low-quality leaves, and the Lord Grey of the name never travelled to China.

Which fruit is sliced, fried, flattened and fried again to make the Latin American snack tostones?

Plantain for tostones is picked green and unripe, and the dish takes its name from the Spanish verb tostar, 'to toast'.

Which fruit tree's leaves are the sole food of the silkworm, the caterpillar behind the silk trade?

Mulberry growing for silkworms began in China more than 4,700 years ago, and the insect's scientific name, Bombyx mori, comes from the tree's genus, Morus.

Citrus fruit protected long-voyage sailors from scurvy because it is rich in which essential nutrient?

Vitamin C was unknown when naval surgeon James Lind ran his 1747 trial, testing citrus against cider, vinegar and seawater in one of the first controlled experiments.

Which natural gelling agent, produced commercially from citrus fruit, is what makes jams and jellies set?

Pectin is abundant in gooseberries, guavas and citrus, while soft fruits contain smaller amounts.

What is the everyday name for the bitter white inner layer of a citrus fruit's peel, beneath the coloured zest?

Pith is the cook's word for what botanists call the albedo; the coloured outer layer is the flavedo, and the two together make up the peel.

The tangerine takes its name from a seaport in which country, the source of early shipments of the fruit?

Morocco's port of Tangier, on the Strait of Gibraltar, shipped the fruit, and 'tangerine' was originally just an adjective meaning 'of Tangier'.

Which 'Brazilian Bombshell' made fruit hats her trademark in Hollywood musicals such as The Gang's All Here?

Carmen Miranda's hats were never made from real fruit, and by 1945 she was the highest-paid woman in the United States.

Which dark berry is crushed and soaked in alcohol to make crème de cassis, the liqueur in a Kir?

Blackcurrant liqueur is a speciality of Burgundy, and bottles made with berries from the regional capital may be labelled Crème de Cassis de Dijon.

Which tart red Nordic berry is made into the jam traditionally served alongside Swedish meatballs?

Lingonberry is so tart that it is usually cooked and sweetened first, and in Sweden, Finland and Norway the sauce also accompanies reindeer and elk steaks.

Which sweet-and-sour, pod-like fruit is used in cuisines around the world and in Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce?

Tamarind extract sits on the label beside anchovies, molasses, onions and garlic; the hard brown pods hold a sweet, tangy pulp that is also used as a dye.

Which small, black-purple fruit of an Amazonian palm was first promoted as a health food in the mid-1990s?

Açaí grows in branched clusters of 500 to 900 fruits and had been a staple of Amazon floodplain communities since around the 18th century.

Which fruit, among the largest borne on any tree, is canned and marketed as a meat alternative?

Jackfruit can reach 90 cm long and weigh up to 50 kg, and the unripe flesh is cooked in curries across South and Southeast Asia.

Blackberries, almonds, apricots and loquats all belong to the botanical family named after which garden flower?

Rose family plants, the Rosaceae, rank among the six most economically important crop families, and rose hips themselves count among its edible fruits.

Which gas, a natural plant hormone, is used commercially to ripen fruit that was picked green for shipping?

Ethylene is scrubbed out of storage rooms to delay ripening, then supplied on purpose once the fruit has been shipped.

Which botanical term describes a fleshy fruit with a single hard stone, such as an apricot or a mango?

Drupe is the botanist's word for a stone fruit, and the class is wider than it looks: almonds, coffee and pistachios belong to it too.

Which easy-peeling citrus fruit is named after the former Japanese province that first exported it to the West?

Satsuma mandarins have a skin so loose that they peel far more easily than other citrus, and in humid climates they can be ripe while still green.

Which fruit, now the national fruit of Jamaica, has a scientific name honouring Captain William Bligh?

Ackee is Blighia sapida because Bligh carried it from Jamaica to Kew in 1793, and pickers wait for the pods to open fully, since the unripe fruit is toxic.

Which large reddish-purple hybrid berry was first cultivated commercially by California farmer Walter Knott?

Boysenberry vines were rescued by Knott from the weed-choked former farm of Rudolph Boysen, who had abandoned his growing experiments years earlier.

Which melon takes its name from a former papal summer estate near Rome, where it was first grown in Europe?

Cantaloupe comes via French from Cantalupo, the name of the estate, and reached English in 1739; in Australia the netted type is sold as rockmelon.

Which relative of the lychee has a Chinese name meaning 'dragon eye', after the black seed inside the fruit?

Longan is written with the characters for 'dragon' and 'eye', because the black seed is said to resemble the eyeball of a Chinese dragon.

Which 16th-century Italian court painter composed portrait heads entirely from fruits, vegetables, flowers and fish?

Arcimboldo painted for three Habsburg rulers in Vienna and Prague, and many of his works were carried off when the Swedish army invaded Prague in 1648.

Which pigments, appearing red, purple or blue depending on pH, colour blackberries, bilberries and red cabbage?

Anthocyanins take their name from Greek words for 'flower' and 'dark blue', echoing the term a German pharmacist coined in 1835 for the compound that turns flowers blue.

What name, from the Latin word for fruit, is given to the branch of botany that studies fruit and its cultivation?

Pomology has a subfield of its own, systematic pomology, devoted to describing, naming and classifying fruit plants.