Watermelon history
Watermelon's botanical name, Citrullus vulgaris, comes from the diminutive form of citrus, referring to the color and shape of the fruit, and vulgaris meaning common or ordinary fruit. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out where its English common name, watermelon, comes from. The flesh of this succulent fruit is over 90 percent water. Native to Africa, it was a valuable and portable source of water for desert situations and when natural water supplies were contaminated. Watermelons were cultivated in Egypt and India as far back as 2500 B.C. as evidenced in ancient hieroglyphics.Watermelon varieties
The more than five hundred varieties of watermelon grown worldwide give consumers many choices, with a wide variety of sizes, shapes, and colors to choose from. They are generally divided into icebox and picnic categories. The icebox category is so called because the size of the melons, ranging from five to fifteen pounds, allows them to fit more easily into the refrigerator. Picnics are larger, weighing from fifteen to fifty pounds, yet they can grow much larger. In 1991, Bill Rogerson of North Carolina, USA, won a place in the Guinness Book of World Records for his gigantic 279-pound watermelon!We are most familiar with the vivid reddish-pink flesh dotted with black seeds, but there are also white-, pink-, yellow- and orange-fleshed varieties, both with seeds and without. Color, size and shape have little bearing on the flavor of the flesh between differing varieties. Seedless varieties are not truly seedless, but actually do contain tiny, white, edible immature seeds in lesser amounts than traditional watermelons.
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