“Semper aliquid novi adferre (Africa always brings us something new),” exclaimed naturalist Pliny the Elder. Some two thousand years later, and in keeping with the changing times, he might have observed, “How cool can you get?” Watermelons have come a long way from their original home in Africa.
It was recently reported that five-year-old Hao Fan’s father made him unusual underwear to help him beat the summer heat. Ruifeng Fan, 33, from Taipei, Taiwan fashioned his son’s underpants from a watermelon. The youngster loved the underpants so much that his dad later made him a watermelon hat and watermelon boxing gloves, according to
The Daily Mirror. The trend has caught on with other people posting pictures of their own watermelon clothing online. One father even created a watermelon suit of armour complete with a helmet and a sword.
In 2002, specialty food store Urban Fare in Edmonton, Alberta, became the first in North America to offer square watermelons – at $99 each. In Moscow over a decade later, the price had risen to about $800 although customers were not exactly stampeding to purchase the cash-heavy curiosity. One luxury supermarket employee told the
Moscow Times there’d been “no rush” to buy them. Square watermelons are grown in Japan, it is claimed to save space and fit precisely into refrigerators.
This is strange since the U.S. Department of Agriculture advises that for their ultimate nutritional quality, watermelon do best when stored at 21ºC – room temperature under air conditioning. Levels of carotenoids increased up to 139 per cent when thus treated but remained unchanged when refrigerated. Nevertheless growers apparently remain unconvinced. Last year, the
Los Angeles Times reported seven illegal immigrants had been apprehended stashed in a tractor-trailer of watermelons, which was refrigerated to 8ºC. Since this was in March, they were presumably not there to celebrate National Watermelon Day, 3rd August.
Mark Twain, the man from Missouri, claimed that a watermelon to be, “Chief of this world’s luxuries . . . when one has tasted it, he knows what angels eat.” He was an expert on the subject. Back in Hannibal when he was known as Samuel Clemens, a field of watermelons proved too tempting. He ‘retired’ one, as he put it, but on breaking it open with a rock discovered that it was still green. Being a resourceful lad, young Clem complained to the farmer from whose field he had purloined it and conned him into giving him a ripe one.
Not everyone has been so enamoured. Literary Lawrence Durrell caustically observed, “He had some of the endearing solemnity of a talk watermelon just down from Cambridge” in his
The Alexandria Quartet (1962). Almost a half-century later a more blunt speaking Drew Barrymore on her fashion faux pas when, at the 2006 Golden Globe Awards she wore “that Gucci green dress where her boobs looked like watermelons.”
In Australia they are even less enamoured – or used to be in days gone by when they attempted to smash open as many as possible using their foreheads. Before do-gooders put a stop to the sport, John Allwood set a world record in February 2009 by smashing 47 watermelons against his forehead in 60 seconds. He listed his occupation as a professional melon picker.
Although in Canada we may raise limited quantities of watermelons locally, most are imported from the United States or even further south. Supermarkets here post signs advising of their origin but in Britain they are fussier – each must bear a label stating its country of origin. This caused ever-vigilant weekly
New Scientist to once query if the supermarket ASDA has achieved quantum superposition of states in melons? Galen Ives wanted to know this after purchasing a watermelon bearing the legend “Produce of more than one country” (
New Scientist, 13 August 2005).
A quarter of all seeds used to raise the crop originated with Taiwan’s ‘Watermelon King,’ who passed away 7 December 2012 at the age of 88. If accidentally swallowed, watermelon seeds, like those of tomato, pass through the human digestive tract. Despite urban mythology, they will not germinate in the stomach.
It is true, however, that watermelons can explode. This can occur if the crop is sprayed with excessive amounts of the growth-accelerating chemical forchlorfenuron. It is legally used in the U.S. where they tend to be less than liberal in applications. In eastern China they are more exuberant, resulting on about 20 farmers and 45 acres of watermelons around the city of Danyang in eastern China exploding.
More happily, watermelons contain citrulline, which can make men friskier. Citrulline triggers the production of a compound that helps relax blood vessels. “Watermelon may not be as organ-specific as Viagra, but it’s a great way to relax blood vessels,” says Bhimu Patil at the Fruit and Vegetable Improvement Center at Texas A&M University, who claims just six slices should suffice.
Juicier, sweeter, more disease-resistant watermelons could be on the way research published in the journal
Nature Genetics reveals. An international consortium of more than 60 scientists from the United States, China and Europe published the genome sequence of watermelon –
Citrullus lanatus – that could dramatically accelerate watermelon breeding toward production of a more nutritious, tastier and more disease resistant fruit.
