Melon is one of the crops that the dinner table in late summer and early autumn cannot do without. Sweet pulp looks great both fresh and after processing as candied fruit, jam or pie filling. Of course, most of the time it doesn’t matter what you call a melon, because it’s delicious without a scientific definition. But sometimes in a conversation you want to call it correctly, and then a logical question arises, what is it. Is melon a berry, fruit or vegetable? In this article, you will find out which family this culture belongs to, where it came from and how it is still correct to call it.
Origin
According to biology textbooks, the melon belongs to the Pumpkin family, the Cucumber genus, and is essentially a gourd. It is widely believed that it spread from the vast expanses of Central and Asia Minor. There is a grain of truth in this, because she loves warmth and an abundance of light, is quite resistant to soil salinization and drought, while reacting negatively to high humidity.
However, for the first time in the pages of history, the melon appears as one of the sacrificial gifts on Egyptian frescoes dating back to the 3rd-4th millennium BC. However, around the same period of time, it was cultivated by many peoples who lived on the territory of present-day Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Iran and China.
Of course, in those days, the melon grew in the wild, so its pumpkins were significantly different from those fruits that we are used to eating now. The ancestors of the modern melon, for the most part, belonged to the genus Cucumis and grew abundantly in Africa. Of the 38 species, 32 grew throughout the African continent, but were not limited only to this territory; travelers often met fruits in Guinea and Arabia. In their form and taste, they were similar to those that grow in India: small pumpkins are egg-shaped and practically do not smell.
If you pay attention to other natural areas where melons have been freely growing since ancient times, then in Northern Manchuria they appeared from the tropical part of Asia and partly from Africa. But in China, this plant came from India. It is curious that it is in these regions that wild melon is widespread, while in the rest the domesticated variety is more common.
The first mention of melon cultivation in Our Country dates back to the 16th century, when the plant was grown in greenhouses. However, planting in open ground was quickly transferred.
Afghanistan and Northwest India are considered to be the birthplace of the cultivation of the melon familiar to us. It is in these regions that one can trace the transition from wild to domestic culture with traces of selection. Apparently, it was from there that the seeds of an already cultivated plant came to Turkey, where there is probably the largest number of varieties and varieties of this crop. This is not surprising, given the favorable climate for its growth.
So this representative of the Pumpkin family traveled a lot across continents and countries before taking on the form we are used to – a large, juicy and sweet pumpkin.
Vegetable, fruit or berry?
No matter how interesting the melon travels across the continents, this does not answer the question of interest to many, how to properly name the culture: a fruit or a vegetable. To begin with, there is a significant difference between the culinary and botanical definition of many plants. So, for example, we are used to saying “fruit” about all sweet fruits, and “vegetable” about any unsweetened part of the plant. That is, given that the melon is sweet and usually eaten as a dessert, from a culinary point of view, it is a fruit.
In biology and botany, things are different. A vegetable is a leafy part of a plant (like spinach), roots (like carrots), stems (like ginger), or flower buds (like cauliflower).
According to BES, a vegetable is also called a fruit, referring to those parts of a plant that form from a flower and serve as a repository for seeds. Dry fruits include: leaflet, bean, pod, box, nut, caryopsis. To juicy: berry, apple, pumpkin, drupe. Expanding this definition, a vegetable is the succulent part of herbaceous plants that are eaten, such as shoots, roots, tubers, rhizomes, inflorescences, leaves, heads, bulbs. Since the fruits of the melon are pumpkins, from the point of view of botany, it is a vegetable.
The confusion arises from the fact that “fruit”, as a definition, is used on a par with the fruit. A fruit is an edible fruit from a tree or shrub, usually an angiosperm, but also formed from an ovary.
The following species variations of the large group “fruit” are divided:
- with juicy pulp and seeds – orange, melon, apple, cucumber;
- with juicy pulp and a large bone – sweet cherry, peach, plum;
- dry fruits – walnut, bean, pea.
Therefore, the melon simultaneously fits into both categories, being both a fruit and a vegetable. At least, why argue with botany?
Nothing less than a fruit vs. vegetable”, people are occupied with a dispute on the topic: “What if a melon is not a fruit or a vegetable, but a berry?”. And here everything becomes even a little more complicated, since this representative of the Pumpkin family is really, in addition to everything else, a berry, again in a botanical definition. We used to call berries small juicy fruits that grow on trees, herbs and bushes. And the melon is not at all like a cherry or a strawberry, at least in size. What is the logic?
According to the botanical definition, the berry has a thin shell, juicy flesh and a hard stone. It is formed from the ovary, but it can appear not only from it, but from any part of the flower (in strawberries and strawberries, the berry is formed from the receptacle). Such a development scheme is called a false berry.
Pumpkin melon, watermelon and cucumber (even a cucumber is not just a vegetable!) Are similar in structure to berries, but differ in a significantly larger number of seeds and pericarp. Therefore, these representatives of Pumpkin belong to false berries.
Video “What fruits are berries”
This informative video will tell you about the various classifications of crops. Thanks to this short video, you will be able to figure out what to consider a melon – a vegetable, fruit or berry.
Author: Svetlana Galitsina
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