Do we really want to know how Edmund's Blood beets acquiredtheir name? (One only hopes Edmund was the gardener, not thefertilizer.)
Although taste, nutrition and even looks supply the main reasonsfor growing your own fruits and vegetables, quirky names add to thefun. And whimsical, elegant, historical and downright odd namesflourish like weeds in the world of gardening. Such names promisethat the varieties are as rich in history as they are in flavor, orhint that even the seed breeders in modern labs are subject toflights of fancy.
Some names describe the plant's appearance or growth habits.Ragged Jack kale (also known as Red Russian or Siberian kale) haslovely blue-green, magenta-edged leaves that are as tattered as thename implies. And call it arugula if you like, but the old name"rocket" better describes the rapid growth of the popular saladgreen.
As you might expect, Tom Thumb lettuce is just the right sizefor a container garden, Serpent Garlic's stems often snake around ina circle, and Joseph's Coat amaranth cloaks itself in gorgeous huesof red, yellow and green.
Some gardeners might be turned off by Bloody Butcher corn, butthe heirloom variety's name is wholly appropriate, said noted gardenwriter Rosalind Creasy. "When you put the kernels in your hand, theylook just like blood. They're not scarlet, but blood red."
Moon and Stars watermelon is a longtime garden favorite."When you see it, you understand the name," said Jan Blum of SeedsBlum in Idaho. "It's a dark green melon, with little sprinkles ofyellow for the stars and larger splotches for the moon."
Rollinson's Telegraph cucumbers, an old English burplessfavorite, evoke visions of a telegraph operator in a small EastAnglian village, carefully tending his vines while waiting foranother message from the outside world. Actually, they may have gotthat name because they are so long and straight (like telegraphpoles), said Renee Shepherd of Shepherd's Garden Seeds.
And although the origin of the "telephone" in Tall Telephonepeas may be a trifle obscure, their tallness isn't; they climb 5 or 6feet.
Little Egypt beets could be related to, or at least inspired by,Crosby's Egyptian beets. As for why beets would be linked to Egyptin the first place - hey, who knows? Maybe Crosby was anarcheologist.
Perhaps because of its popularity, corn seems to gather anearful of quirky names.
"Howling Mob Sweet Corn was a sweet corn that a fellow used togrow and take to the Chicago farmers market around the turn of thecentury," said Kent Whealy of the Seed Savers Exchange in Decorah,Iowa. "That was the impression he got of customers clamoring for hiscorn." Only a handful clamor for it these days; the rare varietyvirtually vanished but was rescued by members of Seeds Savers.
Modern hybrid corns are not immune to fanciful names. It'scertainly no accident that Stokes, an Ontario, Canada-based seedcompany whose motto is "True as Sir Galahad," offers exclusive cornvarieties named King Arthur, Merlin and Lancelot. (You have towonder, does Arthur thrive better if it's planted within whisperingdistance of Merlin? And how does it react to Lancelot, especiallywith no Guinevere corn in the picture?)
Tomatoes come in for some odd names, from Mortgage Lifter -they're huge, Blum reported - to Imur Prior Beta. "I could throttlewhoever named that," said Blum, who said Imur Prior Beta is flavorfulbut hard to sell, and she won't change a variety's name just to makeit more pleasing.
Many beans are named after birds, Blum said. That's becausebirds eat beans, then people shoot and eat birds, and plant any seedsthey might find lurking in the deceased. That's how you wind upwith Turkey Craw beans.
Pumpkins, not surprisingly, inspire some spirited labels.There's Ghost Rider, Spooky and, of course, the Great Pumpkin. JackBe Little, a modern miniature variety sold in grocery stores,suggests that nursery rhymes can provide fertile fields for plantnames.
Fruits and vegetables often go by the names of people who bredthem, grew them, admired them or simply inspired them from afar.Thus we have Burbank tomatoes, Annie Oakley okra, Mrs. Bea's gardenhuckleberries and Jenny Lind muskmelon.
Sometimes the names suggest more specific roots. Lina Sisco'sBird Egg beans were brought by Lina's parents to Missouri in 1858,Whealy said.
And he's fond of Fleener's Top Set onion, a rare plant thathandily grows sets on top of the stems. Other heirloom onions dothis, but Fleener's top sets produce large bulbs the first yearthey're planted. "It was brought to Iowa in 1850 by a widow womanwith seven children," Whealy said. Needless to say, her name wasFleener.
It's only logical that some of the older varieties have the mostunusual names. Gardening was a more personal affair before theadvent of big seed companies and the explosion of hybrids. Gardenersused to save seed year to year and pass it around among friends andrelatives. "They weren't trying to sell it; they were just tryingto be whimsical," Blum said. People tried to name plants afterfamiliar things or people, she added.
For example, she assumes that Grandpa Admires lettuce, a red,heat-resistant heirloom, probably got its name because that, indeed,was the one somebody's grandfather favored.
"It was a way to remember that lettuce from the other three theysaved," said Blum.
The forces of history have shaped other plant names.
Several bean and corn varieties, for example, carry the nameTrail of Tears, said Whealy. The name recalls the grim winter of1838-39, when U.S. troops forced tens of thousands of Cherokees tomove from their homes in the southeastern United States to Indianterritory in the West. The Cherokees carried their precious bean andcorn seeds with them on the trek, during which thousands of theIndians died.
Seed Savers even logs a Mayflower bean, which supposedly arrivedon that famous ship with Anne Hutchinson. "You can't be sure ofsomething that long ago," said Whealy, but the history is fascinatingnonetheless. "I love the stories," he said.
The process of building up a green heritage continues, Whealysaid, as boat people and other immigrants smuggle in seeds andshoots, hoping to transplant a little taste of home here.
Who knows? Maybe 100 years from now a gardener will plant somesets of Tran's Lucky Lemongrass and pause, just for a moment, towonder who Tran was.
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