37 Facts about Fruit - mental_floss List Show Ep. 339 | Mental Floss

Hi, I'm Adrienne. Welcome to the beautiful Salon. This is Mental Floss Video

And did you know that the word pomegranate comes from two Latin words

It can be translated to mean seeded apple. And that's the first of many facts about fruit that I'm going to share with you today

Let's begin by distinguishing between fruits, berries, and droops. Fruits come from plants that produce seeds, and they're actually the ovary or ovaries of the plant

That means they're the part that distributes the seeds. So, interestingly, coffee beans are actually fruit pits

Berries are technically fruits as well, but they come from individual flowers with one ovary

And there's usually a pulp-like substance surrounding the berry's seeds. Drups are very similar to berries, but they have an endocarp, which is a membrane or hard layer around their seed

So now that you know all of that, I can tell you that a banana is technically a berry without shocking you

Bananas are also radioactive, though not enough to make you sick. Basically because a certain isotope of potassium decays and there's potassium in bananas, they emit beta rays

This banana is literally the size of an ape. That's a lot of radioactivity

Just like bananas, watermelons are also a type of berry known as a peepo, because they have hard skin

Speaking of watermelon, there's something called a Densuke watermelon, and they're extremely rare

They only found on Japan Hokkaido island and the most valuable come from the first harvest which only has around 65 fruit In 2008 one single Densuke sold for at an auction

Square watermelons also grow in Japan, and they're one of the items that Axel Rose requests on his tour writer

If you were surprised to learn that bananas and watermelons are berries, you'll probably also be shocked to learn that strawberries aren't

They're known as accessory fruit because most of the fruit comes from the plant's tissues, not the ovary

And strawberries actually contain more vitamin C than oranges do. One serving contains around 86.5 milligrams of vitamin C

compared to the 82.7 milligrams in an orange. And while it might look like there are seeds

on the outside of a strawberry, there actually aren't. Those white seed looking things are the actual fruit

with the seed inside them. Lemons float and limes sink, even though they can be about the same weight

And according to one experimenter, they only have about a 0.1 gram per milliliter difference in density from each other

But it's just enough difference that limes are denser than water and they sink

Lemons aren't, so they float. Lemons probably originated as a hybrid. One study found that they were likely made from two fruits, bitter orange and citron

One of the first trees that the colonists planted in the US was a pear tree

It was planted in the 1630s and still exists in Danvers, Massachusetts today

There are over 750 known species of figs. and in order for each of them to come into existence

they needed their own corresponding species of pollinating fig wasps In 1928 Dr Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin after the mold grew on some of his petri dishes But in the 40s the discovery was taken to another level when a lab assistant found a moldy cantaloupe

that contained a similar fungus in the same family, which produced 200 times more penicillin

Cantaloupes aren't all good, though. In 2011, the worst known foodborne illness outbreak in the U.S. in 25 years occurred

when cantaloupes from Colorado were contaminated. 30 people died of listeriosis. There's a city in Washington state named George

and because of the connection to our first president, many of its streets are named after types of cherries

And speaking of cherries, the Roald Dahl novel, James and the Giant Peach, was originally about a cherry

Peaches, by the way, were the first fruit to be eaten on the moon. The astronauts in the Apollo 11 ate peaches there

You should avoid eating peach, cherry, and apricot pits on the moon or otherwise

because they have amygdalin, which is a cyanide and sugar compound. Kiwis were originally called Chinese gooseberries

but when New Zealand wanted to export them to the US in the 1950s

they had to rename them. There were high import tariffs for berries

Plus, the word Chinese wasn't too popular in the US during the Cold War

In 2012, a semi-truck split on a highway in Wisconsin and 50,000 pounds of cranberries spilled everywhere

No one was injured. A similar incident happened on a New Hampshire highway in 2014

Basically, watch out for cranberry trucks. Black currant was once a popular fruit in the US but it was banned in the early 20th century because it carried a disease that damaged the white pine which was important to the logging industry Now it legal here but many people have never even heard of it

Apples are about 18% air, and there are about 36 apples in one gallon of apple cider. 2.5

pounds of grapes are used for a single bottle of wine, and it takes 50 glasses of water to

grow the oranges found in one glass of orange juice. Grapefruit is a fruit that makes sour foods taste sweet after you eat it

It's a myth that bilberries are good for night vision, but they might be good for vision

in general. It takes at least two years for a pineapple to mature, and pineapple leaves can be used

to make a soft fabric known as piña cloth. Mango skin contains aruchio, which can be found in the sap of poison ivy

Grapefruits probably got their name because they grow on trees in a way similar to grapes

or it might be a corruption of grapefruit. It's a myth that the white part of blueberries are pesticides

It's a natural defense against the sun and insects. Finally, I returned to the salon to tell you that boysenberries are becoming very rare

They used to be the most commonly grown berry bush in California, but they're slowly being

replaced by hybrid berries like the Ruby boysen, a hybrid between boysen, Logan, and Marion berries

Thanks for watching Mental Floss video, which is made with the help of all these nice people

Again, I'm Adrienne. I sometimes host Crash Course Economics. You can check it out here

And let me know your favorite fruit in the comments. Bye