Best of the History Guy: Fruits

[Music] a century ago an american might have enjoyed a bite of crisp green cheese for breakfast might have lunched on stewed mammoth black twig and drank a beverage made from juice squeezed from a rainbow and if that seems like an odd diet it was actually quite common because those are just three of the more than seven thousand named varieties of apples that were commonly cultivated in the united states just a hundred years ago and were a staple of the american diet it might come as a surprise to a modern american many of whom have never tasted more than a handful of the varieties of apples largely chosen from the 11 varieties that account for 90 of apple sales in the united states today but in the 19th century americans cultivated as many as 15 000 different kinds of apples more than any other country on earth and an estimated 80 percent of those are now gone possibly extinct literally forgotten to history and that is too bad because the history of americans apples says much about the history of america from the first days when europeans arrived on her shores to the large modern and diverse nation that we have today the history of america's apples is as american as apple pie apples are deciduous trees from the rose family they produce what is called a pomacious fruit a class which includes pears and quinces the study and cultivation of fruit is called pomology the apple tree originated in central asia and the apples have been cultivated by humans for food in asia and europe for thousands of years apple seedlings are examples of what is called extreme heterozygotes and what that means is is that the seeds of an apple differ significantly genetically from the parent plant and so if you plant seeds from an apple the tree that grows will not produce the same sort of apple as the one from which you got the seeds because of this most apple trees are produced by grafting which takes a piece from a tree's previous growth called the scion and grafts it onto a healthy root structure this allows the farmer to clone an existing tree to reproduce its variety of apple or also to create specific hybrids of apples with preferred characteristics the varieties that have been chosen for their characteristics and deliberately cultivated are called cultivars and today there are more than 7 500 known apple cultivars worldwide when europeans first came to america for example the massachusetts plymouth colony starting in 1620 settlers brought with them scions from english apple trees representing cultivars that had been chosen after hundreds of years of careful breeding but over the course of the next 300 years americans would develop a staggering number of varieties of apples by some estimates as many as 15 000 different varieties of apples so why would they do this why would they run the risk of planting random seedlings when they could use scions to create fine english apples there are a few reasons that america was fertile ground for apple experimentation first many of the european cultivars did not succeed well in america which had different soils and climates english varieties could be vulnerable in america for example because late frosts are far more common in new england than old england second america is a vast land with many different climates and cultures a variety that may thrive in new england may not in the deep south for example in the north varieties that are keepers apples that remain good throughout the winter may be more important than in the south where winters are milder american farmers tended to have more land at their disposal than european farmers allowing greater margin to experiment in fact some states pass laws requiring that a percentage of every farmer's land be dedicated to fruit trees and as the farms were being newly cultivated american farmers had less time to devote to the process of grafting and the risk was somewhat low since even though chance seedlings often produce a small or sour apple many of the fruits were used to press for cider which can be done from almost any apple or to feed pigs so for many reasons americans did not rely on european varieties but planted seedlings producing a huge variety of apples for a number of purposes some were good for cooking and some for eating fresh some for keeping in winter and many for making hard cider and when a seedling produced a desirable type of apple that variety could then be duplicated through grafting for example the golden delicious apple one of the most popular apples in america today came from a chance seedling on a farm in west virginia all golden delicious apples produced in the world come from clones of that one tree and to show the enormous possibility for creating varieties of apples when the genome of the golden delicious was sequenced in 2010 the plant had the highest number of genes of any plant studied to date more than 57 thousand apples were an integral part of america's expansion as apples produced a reliable supply of food one of the most memorable stories in u.s history of that is that of john chapman otherwise known as johnny appleseed contrary to the common idea that he randomly planted apples chapman actually established and attended a series of apple tree nurseries which sold scions to settlers moving into the ohio country in the early part of the 19th century thus apples became an integral part of the western expansion supplying a ready source of food at least one tree thought to have been planted by chapman in nova ohio is still producing apples today eventually apple varieties came to represent every region and virtually every farm or garden the period of the 19th century became known as the golden age of american pomography new apple varieties were reviewed and celebrated like a popular motion picture maybe today apples became a part of national culture as one heirloom apple advocate notes apple serve both as cultural markers on the landscape and ways in which humans actively imbue places with identity and history it is telling that the cultivation of apples which started when europeans first colonized the east coast of the united states is now enormously popular in the far west where the rich soil of washington state produces more apples than any other us state and pomography could be lucrative some american varieties were so prized that they sold in england for as much as 10 times the price of english apples as late as 1905 a us department of agriculture bulletin suggested that as many as 14 000 apple varieties had been cultivated in the united states by contrast today only about 90 varieties are commercially cultivated and just 11 varieties account for 90 of us apple sales an estimated 80 percent of the varieties that used to exist in the us are forever lost to time gone after no one was left to tend the trees there are many reasons that apple varieties have disappeared the baldwin apple for example an exceptionally good pie apple and popular for making cider was once one of the most popular varieties in america the baldwin was nearly eradicated when the particularly harsh winter of 1933-34 wiped out many of the new england orchards while not extinct baldwins are rare today many apples like the once extremely popular harrison apple the pride of new jersey were not suitable for eating but cultivated for making cider many of those were lost when their economic value disappeared during the era of prohibition revenue agents actually went so far as to cut down apple trees to discourage the making of hard cider the harrison was thought to have gone extinct until 1975 when a single tree was found alive on the side of an overgrown former cider press refrigeration decimated the demand for varieties specialized for drying as well as for those keepers that could store for winter but two trends are most responsible for the decline in american apple varieties urbanization and mass commercial production with the advent of railroads apples could be transported long distances production shifted from regional orchards to larger commercial operations apples were then selected for things like yield uniform size and color and the ability to ship them without bruising packability was emphasized over flavor a few cultivars proved the best success for commercial apple growing and other varieties were pushed out as americans moved more towards urban and suburban life fewer people worked the land the individual apple trees at once grace yards and with the pride of small farms became rarer and people no longer appreciated the unique flavor of a local variety none of this is intended to imply that modern varieties are necessarily worse i mean after all the best tasting apples of little value if it can't be moved to a consumer and the united states is still the second largest producer of apples in the world today behind china tastes have changed and most newer varieties of apples are actually scientifically bred to be sweeter the very popular honeycrisp variety today for example was patented in 1988 and created by researchers at the university of minnesota twin cities some scientists have become concerned that the reduction in varieties makes the apple crop more susceptible to blight and there have been some efforts to increase genetic diversity among the apple crop pomography is still alive in america today as is evidenced by the nation's many apple festivals and farmers markets where sometimes you can find delicious heirloom apple varieties that evoke the nation's past and today people called apple detectives searched the wilderness for forgotten apple trees which can live up to 200 years and in backyards and forgotten orchards they are continually rediscovering varieties once thought lost for example the fletcher suite once thought to be extinct was successfully cloned from the last living branch on an almost dead tree in 2002 that branch is an analogy for the nation's past and like the fletcher suite it has a unique flavor that deserves to be remembered [Music] around 75 million tons of oranges were commercially grown worldwide in 2018 and shipped to virtually every corner of the world orange trees among the most popularly cultivated fruit trees in the world and like many other cultivates have been carried by humans around the world to be grown far from where they first originated oranges are now grown on six continents and the history of oranges is unique and intimately tied to human civilization and of course not too many fruits can claim to be the namesake of a color it is history that deserves to be remembered citrus fruits originated in asia likely in the southeast himalayan foothills and surrounding area according to a 2018 genetic study the history of individual citrus fruits is complex and it's unclear when precisely the fruits were domesticated although they spread over southeast asia and even australia millions of years ago they have been cultivated first in india and then in china and elsewhere for at least several thousand years genetic studies of sweet oranges have shown that the result of cross cross-breeding between pomelos and mandarins bitter oranges similar in outward appearance but not in taste are not eaten raw but are used for flavoring and in alcohol the sweet orange seems to have come from a deliberate cross by ancient farmers the first certain mention of the fruit appears in a chinese source in 314 bc the origins of the bitter orange are less clear and it may have arisen naturally linguistically the word for orange came from an ancient sanskrit word for the orange tree naranga this became the persian narong and then the arabic word for the bitter orange narage the bitter orange took its name across the world first spreading westward with trade through india persia and possibly the mediterranean in fact several other citrus fruits seem to have spread even earlier first the citroen which fourth century bc greek philosopher theophrastus called a persian apple and several centuries later the lemon it is possible that bitter oranges reach greece and italy at this time although it's not certain the bitter orange was popular in medieval muslim culture as a flavoring in medicine and its flowers were used for perfumes the muslim empire helped bring the bitter orange to north africa and then into spain growing bitter oranges became highly popular in andalusia especially in the city of seville the mythical founder of the city is hercules who supposedly founded it during his famous labors just before he traveled to find golden apples sometimes identified as oranges because the greek and latin words for oranges translate to golden apples by the 10th century a.d the bitter orange was planted widely in andalusia supported by a complex system of irrigation designed to sustain orange orchards the issue of water and irrigation was so important to the region that it has continued to define the appearance of the land in the modern age oranges from seville have become famous as the primary oranges used in british marmalade and much of the modern crop of seville oranges now go to satisfying the uk's demand or just spread throughout the mediterranean the orange slowly made its way north though the etymology isn't perfectly clear the word came to france as orange and by the 12th century the middle english as orange sometime at the end of the 15th century or early 16th centuries traders finally brought the sweet orange to the european table the earliest found written reference to the fruit in europe comes from italy in 1471 and in 1475 the first distinction between a sweet and a bitter orange appears in a manuscript from rome in fact oranges have a close relationship with the church in early modern europe italian medieval tradition says that oranges were brought to italy by saint dominic of guzman the founder of the dominican friars when he gifted a spanish orange tree to pope innocent iii in 1216. a tree supposedly grown from the same roots still remains at the convent of saint sabina in rome in 1483 saint francis of paola went to the french court of king louis ix to request help with an illness the friar didn't eat meat or food derived from animals prompting the king to request lemons and sweet oranges and muscadelle pears and parsnips for the holy man who eats neither meat nor fish the sweet orange was much more palatable and gained popularity among the wealthy in europe the discovery that citrus fruits could prevent scurvy and made the fruit vital to sailing as many as two million sailors died from scurvy during the age of expiration this is why columbus brought orange seeds with him on his journeys to the new world and may have planted them with hispaniola in 1493. ponce de leon and other spanish explorers brought oranges to florida in the 1500s and origins were growing at st augustine the first european colony in what would become the united states by 1579. all of the explorers of this time brought oranges with them and planted the seeds on islands and at colonies wherever they went one hope was that establishing orange groves along trade routes would help ensure an ample supply for ships this brought oranges to brazil mexico and much of south america spanish missionaries brought them north into arizona between 1707 and 1710 and franciscans brought them to san diego by 1769. if you've ever wondered which came first the name of the fruit or the name of the color then you'll be happy to know that the name of the fruit clearly came first the fruit was called orange or a similar word by the 13th century throughout europe while the first appearance of the word orange for color derived from the fruit doesn't appear until after fifteen hundred while linguists are not certain most of them think that before fifteen hundred there wasn't a word for the color orange at all and old english referred to the color simply as yellow red back in europe the fruit continued to spread the more northern climates of europe were too cold for growing oranges but that didn't stop the wealthy from finding a way to get their orange fix the first orangery a greenhouse built to protect fruits like oranges from the cold was built in italy as early as 1545. they became popular following the end of the 80 years war in 1648 as countries like france germany and the netherlands began getting regular shipments of exotic fruits from asia in the new world by far the most impressive orangery was built by louis the 14th to house his thousands of orange trees the versailles orangery completed in the 1680s would remain the largest of its kind until modern greenhouses began to appear in the 1800s the building wasn't just meant to house exotic trees but to impress visitors and serve as a visual reminder of wealth and power orderies were extensively decorated and meant to entertain guests in the coldest months fires would be lit inside to keep the temperature high enough as he grew old the king had orange trees put in silver pots throughout the palace to perfume the whole building with the scent of citrus blooms orange as a fruit and a color has an interesting connection to the famous house of orange nassau still the royal house of the netherlands the german nassau house inherited lands and political power in the netherlands renee of shalom orange son of the head of the nassau house took over his father's position as stott hodler of holland zealand and utrecht in 1540. renee had inherited the title prince of orange from his mother's childless uncle the house of orange takes its name from the principality of orange based around the city of orange in southern france the town was founded by members of the roman second legion in 35 bc as arusio named after a local celtic god the name russio seems to been corrupted and inflated to the french orange the city may have conflated the names due to a connection with oranges which in the middle ages were transported from spain through the city on their way north the house of orange otherwise had no connection to either the fruit or the color until william of orange also called william the silent began fighting for dutch independence in the 1500s it was during this time that the house adopted the color and it came to represent protestantism and the house of orange fought on the protestant side during a number of wars of religion by 1577 william took a tri-color flag of orange white and blue as his own later william iii of orange became the king of england with his wife queen mary in 1689 and the color orange became an important political statement protestants in catholic majority ireland became known as orange men and the color orange remains symbolic of the dutch monarchy and the netherlands in general the orange free state in south africa took its name from the house and used the color in its flag and the flag of new york city has an orange stripe in honor of its history as a dutch colony in england oranges took on a different cultural heritage in the form of marmalade marmalade's origins lie with the quince fruit similar in appearance to a pear that was turned into a paste and imported from the iberian peninsula the word marmalade likely comes from the portuguese word for quince marmello it isn't clear exactly when oranges were first used in marmalades but a recipe for orange marmalade exists from at least 1677. it seems that with quince paste came barrels of sockets whole pieces of oranges and other citrus fruit peels that were preserved with sugar marmalade came to refer to any kind of fruit preserve and only took on the specific meaning in england of a citrus preserve much later there is a legend in dundee scotland that marmalade was invented by janet kyler mother to james kyler who ran a confectionary shop in seagate the story goes that a spanish ship showed up in dundee harbor seeking refuge from a storm ship was running behind was carrying some bitter seville oranges which were close to rotting kyler bought the cargo and his mother boiled the peels combine them with sugar to create marmalade well it has been definitely proven that they did not invent marmalade the kylers and their descendants played an important role in the popularization across the british isles janet does seem to have added solid pieces of the peel creating chip marmalade their company became james kyler and son and produced possibly the first commercial marmalade marmalade became a popular part of a british breakfast and remains the favorite food of paddington bear in america the success of the sweet orange industry can largely be attributed to a single type of orange the navel orange almost all citrus trees are infertile and the creation of hybrids and mutations have made the taxonomy of the various roots very complex in general orange trees are grafted using pieces of existing trees and graphing them onto other root stock naval oranges were born in a monastery in bahia brazil the result of a genetic mutation attributed to a single tree the naval orange gets its name from the growth of a second fruit at the apex which protrudes slightly to appear like a human navel the bahia orange has some unique characteristics it's seedless has a thicker skin making it ideal for transport and it's well suited to more northern climates the bahia orange was acquired by washington dc grower by 1871. two of those first trees were sent to elizabeth tibbetts a progressive activist for freedom and women who moved to california to become a pioneer of the town of riverside california tibbetts watered her trees with dish water and nurtured them to health when the first fruits which got the name washington naval oranges were displayed at a fair they immediately demanded detention over the next decade tibbetts sold buds to other growers and became the dominant orange type in southern california by 1900 the bahia was introduced in florida in 1835 but wasn't successful until the 1870s interestingly at the time orange juice was not a popular commodity while oranges have been used for jews for centuries it requires fresh oranges and it was difficult to transport the juice any distance because it quickly spoiled in 1893 growers in southern california formed a co-op which became the sun-kissed growers inc albert lasker called the father of modern advertising took the sun-kissed account at the time overproduction was forcing growers to actually cut down orange trees but lasser began the drink and orange campaign selling tencent juicers to encourage buyers to juice their own fruits with the advent of pasteurization and the development of refrigerated rail cars orange juice became a sensation frozen orange juice from concentrate took a little longer for most in the 1920s orange juice came in a can didn't taste very good because pasteurization ruined most of the flavor by 1941 a very different issue presented itself soldiers were sent to war with vitamin c rich packets of lemon crystals but they tasted so bad soldiers wouldn't eat them meanwhile cooperatives in florida began growing more oranges at the behest of the government in an attempt to cushion the effects of rationing canned orange juice was brought by the government as a replacement for the living crystals but the government hoped that a better alternative could be created during the war florida cooperatives advertised the importance of vitamin c and surpassed california's largest producer of citrus roots by the end of the war the national research corporation with the support of the government and florida orange producers had invented orange juice from concentrate this is an orange a choice tree ripened beauty the kind snow crop picks right at the peak of perfection to make snow crop frozen orange juice researchers found that after boiling oranges had lost its flavor but by adding a little bit of fresh juice afterward it could be significantly restored this process of cutback was patented in 1948 and dubbed minute maid perhaps the greatest irony of oranges is if that they're grown in tropical zones where it's warm year-round that the right fruit is green and not orange that has nothing to do with the fruits ripeness it has to do with chlorophyll which is what turns all plants green but when oranges are subjected to cold weather like they are in the united states in the spring and in the fall they usually turn orange however oranges grown say primarily in the summer and the us can still be green and in the us that means that they are deliberately turned orange using a number of different methods today sweet oranges come in a number of different varieties things like tangerines and valencias and blood oranges and clementines but they are all descendants of those fruits that were deliberately cross-bred in asia thousands of years ago that have so shaped cultures and history and even our landscape [Music] here's an interesting trivia question do you happen to know what item is most sold at walmart i'll give you a hint it's a berry that grows from an herb or if you come from the united kingdom a herb here's another hint the herb is in the family musicae and the most popular version of this berry is called the cavendish and if you still don't know does it help to know that it was among the first fruits to be domesticated by humans that it is so historically important that empires have been built on it and governments overthrown because of it and that comedians have made entire careers slipping on its peel the history of the banana deserves to be remembered currently the scientific thinking is that the first fruit to be domesticated was the fig with examples found in the archaeological record in the jordan valley as early as 9 400 bc a few other fruits notably the bottle gourd which is cultivated not for food but because the dried fruit produces a useful container may have also been domesticated before the banana but some scientists estimate that the banana was domesticated as early as 8000 bc and there's written evidence that the cultivation of bananas had reached india by 6000 bc thus bananas were possibly domesticated at approximately the same time as rice and potatoes predating the domestication of apples by millennia bananas are herbaceous plants from the genus musa in the family musa k the plants are not technically trees because their apparent stems actually pseudo stems are not woody but are made up of leaf stalks in fact the plants may initially have been domesticated for their fibers for weaving rather than for their fruit the banana fruit is produced from the ovary of a single flower in which the outer layer of the ovary wall develops into an edible fleshy portion thus bananas are by the botanical definition a berry in the wild they are an important food source for wildlife and are eight pioneer species that exploits newly disturbed areas for example after a fire there are more than a thousand species of wild banana in southeast asia china and the indian subcontinent producing a staggering array of fruits the musa valentina for example produces a bright pink fuzzy banana and the ghost sung hang species is so aromatic that its chinese name literally translates as you can smell it from the next mountain well bananas were likely first domesticated in southeast asia or papua new guinea arab traders carried bananas back home and introduced the fruit to the middle east in the first or second millennium bc and then took the fruit to the east coast of africa the fruit was then traded across the continent eventually being cultivated in western africa the introduction of the banana to africa occurred so long ago that parts of africa have become secondary centers of genetic diversity in fact there are two competing stories for the etymology of the word banana one posit said it comes from the arabic word bana for finger because early bananas would have been about the size of your finger the other posits that the word was derived from a west african language in 327 bc alexander and his armies discovered the banana during one of their campaigns in india and introduced the delicious fruit to the western world particularly to mediterranean countries in the 6th century the portuguese discovered bananas on the atlantic coast of africa and then they then cultivated the fruit on the canary islands and from there it was introduced to the americas by spanish missionaries early cultivated bananas would not have been like what we buy at the supermarket today rather wild bananas are full of seeds hard enough to break your tooth and would have been smashed and sieved to eat the soft fruit over time farmers would have selected those bananas that had fewer seeds but such bananas eventually would become so seedless that they could not be grown from seeds and the plants had to be reproduced asexually small bulbs grow out of the plant's rhizome underground called the corm these small bulbs growing out of the rhizomes are also called suckers and they grow to become banana plants instead of planting seeds the suckers are harvested from a plant and used to grow more plants which are essentially clones of the parent cultivation led to hundreds of edible varieties but few were suitable for mass importation the banana rich culture we have today the average american eats 28 and a half pounds of bananas each year was the product of the 19th century while bananas were being cultivated in plantations in the 15th and 16th centuries those are red or green bananas that included a lot of starch and today would be called plantains for the most part they had to be cooked to be softened and eaten in 1936 a farmer in jamaica named jean-francois peugeot discovered a banana plant on his plantation that the result of random genetic mutation was producing yellow bananas the fruit was naturally sweet and soft enough to be eaten without cooking this banana grew in tightly packed bunches and had a thick peel that resisted bruising facilitating transport hundreds of cultivars of this banana mutation have evolved to give the world one of the greatest food breakthroughs in history supplying the world with the number one fruit grown to feed earth's population the modern yellow banana the banana originally called the martinique banana was so popular that the variety was cultivated all along the caribbean coast in central america that type became known as the gross michelle or the big mike and it was a game changer americans had seen bananas imported from cuba early in the 19th century but those were seen as merely a novelty likewise bananas had been displayed in london in the 1600s but again the fruit was little more than an oddity economic and dietary changes combined with the characteristics of the gross michelle created a massive trade imports into the us gradually increased especially at the end of the civil war but interest and imports really took off in the 1870s in 1871 banana exports to the united states were valued at around 250 000 by the first year of the 20th century the banana trade had exponentially ballooned to six million four hundred thousand dollars ten years later it had effectively doubled again so many bananas were imported onto the docks at the tip of lower manhattan that the old slit piers became known as the banana dogs fast sometimes refrigerated boats built especially to carry bananas without spoiling were called banana boats at one point the united fruit company now known as chiquita brands international had the world's largest private fleet the big mike facilitated the worldwide banana market and created the american and european love for the fruit in 1904 a 23 year old apprentice pharmacist at tassel pharmacy in latrobe pennsylvania named david evans strickler invented the banana base triple ice cream sundae better known as the banana split one of america's most popular desserts the banana in that split was a big mike and then a banana crisis the gross michelle had become a classic example of a mono crop big mics were grown from thousands of genetically identical plants that allowed a specialization that facilitated mass production and distribution better revealed a vulnerability if one tree was susceptible to a pest or blight they all would be that blight came in the form of fusarium oxysporum a fungus that caused the banana plant to rot with what is commonly called panama disease the blight was first identified in the 1870s and that gross michelle was particularly vulnerable to the blight by the 1950s it had spread all over the banana producing world the blight was so virulent that it caused the complete eradication of production on 30 000 hectares of plantation in the ula valley of honduras between 1940 and 1960. in suriname an entire operation of 4 000 hectares was out of business within eight years and in the capos area of costa rica 6 000 hectares were destroyed in just 12 years as suddenly it has risen the banana market crashed some claim that the decline of the big mike inspired the popular song yes we have no bananas first recorded in 1923 the song was the single best-selling piece of sheet music for many decades the solution to the problem came from an unexpected source derbyshire england in 1834 the duke of devonshire received a shipment of bananas from the indian ocean island of mauritius the duke's friend and chief gardener sir joseph paxton cultivated the bananas in the greenhouse at chatworth house the duke's home in derbyshire paxton named the variety musa kevin dishi named after the duke william cavendish the variety was then cultivated in the canary islands and commercially cultivated by 1904 but the cavendish could not compete with a big mike which had a better flavor and a thicker peel that made it easier to ship but the cavendish turned out to have one great advantage it was resistant to fusarium oxysporum because it was not as hardy the cavendish cannot be as easily shipped in the natural cluster like the gross michelle the clusters had to be broken into bunches and then boxed making the caveats more costly to ship still cavendish bananas represent nearly half of the bananas produced in the world today and nearly all of the export market if you buy a banana outside the tropics it is almost certainly a cavendish although it may surprise some people to know that you are not buying the same type of banana that your grandparents ate the banana trade is so lucrative that has driven more than a century of politics especially in central america and the caribbean american-based companies corrupted local governments in order to obtain exclusive production rights and ran huge swaths of central american countries as virtual corporate nations so-called enclave economies that contributed little to the host economy economic exploitation gave rise to violent labor movements which drew the united states government eager to advance its economic and military interests into a series of conflicts throughout the region although the wars were not exclusively driven by the economic demands of the fruit companies the series of conflicts became known as the banana wars the term encompassed the spanish-american war the 1916-17 punitive expedition against pancho villa in mexico a 19-year occupation of haiti that has been described as america's black vietnam and dozens of other interventions the nation of honduras alone saw the insertion of american troops in 1903 1907 1911 1912 1919 1924 and 1925. in 1911 a private army financed by the cayamel fruit company orchestrated a coup d'etat in honduras over a conflict with rival united fruit company for an exclusive contract for honduran bananas the unstable economies and governments caused by these interventions led american writer o henry to coin the term banana republic perhaps the low point of the intrusion by the american fruit companies came in columbia in 1928 when the government of colombian president miguel mendes under pressure from both the united fruit company and the us government sent army troops to quell a strike by workers on the company's banana plantations the troops fired machine guns into a crowd of workers killing between 800 and 3000 in what became known as the banana massacre under the administration of franklin roosevelt the u.s shifted to what was called the good neighbor policy reducing these interventions but not eliminating them in 1954 the united fruit company portrayed labor reforms in guatemala as a move towards communism prompting the eisenhower administration to orchestrate a covert operation of the cia to overthrow the elected president the united states and the european union engaged in a trade complaint over bananas through the world trade organization for more than 20 years the eu used tariffs to favor trade to former european colonies which disadvantaged bananas from other countries harming u.s fruit company interests in those nations the u.s and five other countries filed a complaint with the world trade organization and after the eu defied a wto ruling imposed tariffs on a range of eu agricultural products eventually the eu agreed to eliminate the preferential tariffs the dispute was one of the longest and most contentious in wto history today the banana is the world's fourth major food behind rice wheat and milk americans alone eat more than three million tons of bananas each year more than apples and oranges combined while the people of the u.s and europe almost exclusively eat cavendish bananas hundreds of local varieties are grown in the tropics bananas are cultivated in more than 170 countries and play an important role in the economy of developing countries of the nearly 80 million tons of bananas produced around the world less than 20 percent are exported the rest are eaten locally there are many places in sub-saharan africa where people eat bananas and little owls according to islamic tradition bananas are the food of paradise and if you're ever in a tropical country it's worth your while to check out the local bananas but we all might again soon be singing yes we have no bananas as the cavendish is proving vulnerable to mutated strains of panama disease once again the world's export bananas are tied to a single species and that supply is under threat in 2016 cnn described the new blight as a banana crisis the answer might come in the form of genetically modified cavendishes or even the return of the big mike as scientists have been trying to breed a fungus-resistant version of the big mic ever since the first bike took hold in the 1900s or perhaps a new banana will rise to become king of the export market and once again we'll have to get used to a new banana [Music] pineapples are oddly ubiquitous a common motif in art for centuries they're even sculpted into furniture and cover your grandmother's kitchen wallpaper they're an ironic example of something that has become common precisely because they are exotic they are such an important cultural touchstone that they adorn the tops of famous cathedrals and serve as the domicile from one of the world's most popular cartoon characters some 300 billion pineapples are farmed each year and a 2017 yuca poll found pineapples to be the sixth most popular fruit ahead of all varieties of apples and oranges but pineapples are certainly not without controversy or they're well known to be the most controversial of pizza toppings so much so that in 2017 the president of iceland opined that he would ban pineapple pizza if he had the authority the history of pineapples the king of fruits deserves to be remembered contrary to what many seem to assume pineapples do not grow on trees rather a pineapple is the fruit of an herbaceous perennial a short stocky plant with waxy leaves growing usually between just over three feet to just under five feet tall the development of the fruit is complex a number of fleshy leaves form around a stem which lengthens and then produces numerous leaves in close spirals this grows into a spike-like stalk of little reddish purple flowers the ovaries of these flowers then develop into berries which coalesce into a compact multiple fruit after one fruit forms the plant produces side shoots that produce more fruit these side shoots called suckers can also be harvested to produce more plants depending upon variety the fruit is usually ready for picking about five months after the original flowering and approximately a year after the last harvest while the design of a pineapple appears to be random these are actually tightly spun helices whose numbers generally follow a mathematical fibonacci sequence the species is originally native to the drainage of the paraguay river between modern brazil and paraguay it's been cultivated by humans for some 3000 years and spreads both a food crop and for fibers used in textiles throughout south america before the arrival of the first europeans the first known europeans to encounter the fruit were sailors on columbus's second voyage in november 1493 on the caribbean island of guadalupe a group went ashore to find a carib village that had been deserted in the village where piles of freshly gathered fruit including pineapples and describing the fruit the members of the expedition used the term pina de indes meaning pine of the indians an allusion to the exterior of the fruit appearing like a giant pine cone the name actually took some time to develop and the fruit was called by various names most commonly a version of nana's are ananas derived from the south american tupian language meaning roughly excellent fruit the name pineapple to refer to the fruit was not used in english until the 17th century and was often used in conjunction with ananas well into the 19th century oddly the english use of the word pineapple predates the european discovery of the pineapple with the term being used to describe what today we call a pine cone as early as the 14th century the term pine cone itself did not appear until 1694 suggesting that it was the name of the fruit that drove the change in the name for the cone still pineapples are generally only called pineapples in english with most other languages using some version of ananas or nanas while the fruit was an established staple food crop among the indigenous people of south america when it was first discovered by columbus the plant requires warm temperatures generally between the high 70s and 80s fahrenheit or 25 to 30 degrees celsius and full sun that is it was unsuited to the european climate europeans did however cultivate the fruit in european colonies in tropical zones portuguese took the fruit to saint helena africa and india in the 16th century the spanish were cultivating pinas in the philippines at least in the 17th century where fibers from the red spanish cultivar were used in weaving fine fabrics pineapples were particularly valuable for seafaring as eating pineapple prevents scurvy but in europe the fruit was extremely rare could not be grown locally and tended to spoil quickly after being picked and fruits imported across the ocean were often spoiled despite rave reviews for the taste of the fruit it was not suitable for mass export and plantations in the new world focused on sugar production instead thus in renaissance europe pineapples were rare and expensive and so became a symbol of wealth and decadence while actual pineapples were beyond the reach of most people pineapples became a common motif in art and architecture commonly sculpted on bed posts cloth and on weather veins symbolizing opulence pineapples were so valuable as a symbol that the fruit whose cost in england was the equivalent of 5 000 british pounds today could be rented as bbc news notes less well-off folk might hire one for a special event dinner part or even just a gently tuck one under an arm and show off stroll by the 1770s bbc continues a pineapple of the finest flavor became a phrase used for anything that was the best of the best in fact the pineapple became a symbol of royalty anointed by god by placing a crown of leaves at the top 17th century french pharmacist pierre pomay wrote about them it was not a just appellation to call the ananas the king of fruits because it is much the finest and best of all that are upon the face of the earth it is for this reason that the king of kings has placed a crown upon the head of it which is an essential mark of its royalty there is a famous portrait of charles ii king of great britain being presented with a pineapple by his royal gardener john rose the symbol of kingship is particularly important given that charles ii represented the restoration of the monarchy after the period of the english commonwealth following the english civil war but the pineapple in the painting might also have been a surreptitious way of alluding to charles ii's famous royal appetites including fathering a dozen children with seven different mistresses the fruit also took on religious significance based on its composite nature the idea is that the entire plant gives its life to produce a single fruit thus when the great fire of london gutted old saint paul's cathedral in 1666 architect christopher wren added golden pineapples to the spires of the church meant to symbolize london's rising from the ashes the pineapples of saint paul's cathedral are the symbol of the city's rebirth pineapples were somewhat less expensive britain's north american colonies which were physically closer to the caribbean where the fruit was cultivated the website of indiana university of pennsylvania notes that some accounts tell of new england sea captains who upon returning from trade routes in the caribbean or pacific would place a pineapple outside their homes as a symbol but safe return in america the pineapple became a symbol of hospitality while less rare than in europe pineapples were still difficult to obtain the website of the lasher art gallery of new york in bermuda writes the symbolic gesture engendered by the mere presence of a pineapple at the table evolved over time into a cultural ritual with the pineapple coming to express the warmest possible greeting a hostess could extend to her guests who felt deeply honored by a hostess who spared no expense in her effort to facilitate a communal feeling of inclusiveness and respect in the 18th century the dutch republic became a pineapple distribution hub for europe through the dutch west india company with pineapples grown in the dutch colony of suriname methods for successfully growing pineapples in hot houses heated by burning tanner's bark bark from an oak tree in alkos developed in the 18th century when a pineapple was grown in the hot house of matthew decker the first baronet of richmond in 1720 thought to be the first cultivated pineapple in england he commissioned dutch painter theodorus nature to paint a painting commemorating the event despite difficulties gardeners at the french palace of versailles managed to produce a pineapple that was presented to king louis xv in 1733 one legend claims he was so eager to taste the fruit that he bit through and injured his upper lip another says that he had a piece sent to every noble in the country so they could taste it for themselves the website of the palace of versailles writes quickly became one of the king's favorite fruits and a new hot house was promptly erected according to eugene walter the king spent some thousand francs a year at the hot house alone actually the plants that produced the pineapple later provided samples which were sent as diplomatic gifts hot houses capable of growing pineapples became something of a competition among the nobility of europe john murray the earl of dunmore who was governor of colonial virginia played a central role in the outbreak of the american war for independence was so proud of his hot house in dunmore park that he had it decorated with a giant pineapple the website just history knows that in 1782 the duke of bullion's home in france supposedly had some 4 thousand pots of pineapples the end of the century even catherine the great of russia was eating pineapples from her own gardens the transportation of the pineapple was greatly improved with the development of dr nathaniel bagshaw ward's wardian case a terrarium like glazed and sealed glass box that allowed exotic plants to better survive long sea journeys in 1842 in the united states pineapples tend to be associated with our 50th state while pineapples may have been brought by european explorers as early as the 16th century the first definitive record of the pineapple being cultivated in hawaii was in 1813. when don francisco du palma marin a spanish advisor to king kamehameha wrote in his journal this day i planted pineapples and an orange tree the economic exploitation the crop began in 1849 as a means of supplying the new demand in california due to the gold rush however spoilers still limited the commercial value of the crop and sugar production was the primary cash industry of the kingdom canning of pineapples in the united states began in 1865 in baltimore canning pineapples from cuba in the bahamas many innovations in mechanical pineapple peelers and slicers were developed in baltimore but the introduction of tariffs in the 1890s increased the cost of importing pineapples in the industry in baltimore faded canning of pineapples in hawaii began as early as 1882 but sugar was still the more lucrative crop and pineapples were not a significant part of the economic impetus that drove the overthrow of the kingdom of hawaii in 1893 however the annexation of hawaii in 1898 meant the removal of tariffs by then the successful cultivar smooth cayenne type of pineapple that was vigorous tolerant of most pests and diseases and had fruit of good quality that canned well been introduced to the islands pineapple was also found to thrive at altitudes in hawaii that were unsuitable for sugar cane plantations which required irrigation much of this land was developed from pasture by homesteaders research in hawaii developed techniques in cultivar production and past resistance and major producers were formed del monte fresh produce was formed by californian alfred e james in 1898. dole hawaiian pineapple company was formed by james drummond dole in 1901 and maui land and pineapple was formed in 1909 aided by robust marketing campaigns hawaii became the top supplier pineapples in the world in the 1930s once an exotic local fruit it is now an important item on the american menu well there was competition growing in foreign markets hawaii dominated sales of pineapple in the united states and during the second world war production from competitors such as malaysia taiwan and the philippines was significantly disrupted in the 1960s hawaii was responsible for 80 percent of the world's pineapple but competition and world production from places with lower labor costs and the advent of refrigerator transportation solar reduced the dominance of hawaiian pineapple production del monte and dole both shut down major pineapple operations in hawaii in the 1980s and today the state produces less than 10 percent of the pineapples that are sold worldwide but that connection between hawaii and pineapples it created a connection in the minds of people that connected polynesian culture and cuisine to pineapples and it was a homage to polynesian culture that prompted animator stephen hillenburg to make a pineapple under the sea the home of spongebob squarepants one odd effect of the pineapple industry in the state of hawaii is that pineapples are one of the reasons that hawaii has no hummingbirds a remote archipelago hummingbirds never naturally made it across the ocean to hawaii and their importation is banned while there are many reasons not to introduce foreign species hummingbirds are specifically banned in hawaii because superior pineapples are produced from unpollinated fruit which will not go to seed hummingbirds are natural pollinators of pineapples and their importation and banned to protect the quality of hawaiian pineapples when seeds are needed for propagation growers pollinate plants by hand well marketing campaigns seem to have forever linked hawaii to pineapples in fact pineapples have always had an association with the caribbean where they were first discovered by columbus in 1493. since 1661 the official coat of arms of jamaica has prominently featured pineapples alluding not just to the production of ananas but as a symbol of how different cultural minorities have come together to form a nation while pineapples are produced throughout the world's tropical zones the top producers today are costa rica the philippines brazil and indonesia as with many industrial operations there are criticisms for environmental reasons mostly because the use of pesticide and economic reasons as the lucrative crop seems to have failed to reduce local poverty perhaps the biggest controversy regarding pineapple however is whether it belongs on pizza well often associated with hawaii and even called hawaiian pizza the combination of sweet pineapple and ham on pizza was actually created in canada in 1962 by a greek immigrant called sampanopolis since that time pineapple on pizza has become the subject of heated culinary and cultural debate a 2017 yougov poll found that 82 percent of people surveyed liked pineapple only a slim majority 53 like the fruit on their pizza nearly a third 29 said that they hated the idea well there are multiple cultivars of pineapple that are commercially available the vast majority sold in supermarkets in the united states and europe are the smooth cayenne variety experts say that when determining whether a pineapple is ripe it should have a consistent greenish yellow hue should have a firm shell but be slightly soft should have a sweet smell at the base of the fruit and the frogs at the top should pull easily pineapple will not continue to ripen after being picked and should be consumed within one or two days of purchase when cutting a pineapple some culinary specialists suggest first cutting off the top and letting the pineapple rest upside down for a half hour to better distribute its juices then cut off the bottom remove the skin and cut the fruit lengthwise into quarters making it easy to remove the hard central core today the pineapple that one cost the equivalent of 000 british pounds can be purchased in many uk supermarkets for less than a pound each it's rich in vitamins and includes an enzyme called bromeline which is an anti-inflammatory that can reduce your risk of cancer reduce pain from arthritis reduce recovery time after exercise and boost your immune system and as an added bonus can also be used to tenderize meat and so while you no longer have to be a king to afford a pineapple pineapple looks to retain its title as the king of fruits i hope you enjoyed this episode of the history guide short snippets of forgotten history and if you did enjoy feed the algorithm by making a comment or clicking that like button if you have suggestions for future episodes please send those to our suggestions email box check out our webpage at thehistoryguy.net and of course we're on facebook instagram and twitter you can book a special message from the history guy on cameo and check out our merchandise teespring.com and if you'd like more episodes of forgotten history all you need to do is subscribe [Music]

Channel: The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

Views: 218,666

Keywords: history, history guy, the history guy, fruit

Id: XEEOtWfC1UI

Length: 52min 39sec (3159 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 13 2022