Mind the fruit

Who was Granny Smith, the apple? Fruits and veggies with real names

You probably know a Granny Smith from a McIntosh, and you may have ordered Hass avocado without giving its name a second thought. But many familiar fruits and vegetables are actually carrying around the names of real people. Behind those supermarket labels are farmers, judges, missionaries, immigrants, and a few very lucky gardeners. Let’s take a look at 11 people whose names unexpectedly became part of our grocery vocabulary!

Yes, Granny Smith was a real granny. Maria Ann Smith was born in England in 1799 and emigrated to Australia with her husband, Thomas, in 1838. The couple eventually established an orchard in Eastwood, near Sydney.

Around 1868, Smith showed another orchardist an unusual apple seedling growing near a creek on her property, apparently from discarded crab apples. She propagated it, but died in 1870, before seeing its success. By the 1890s, "Granny Smith's seedlings" were winning prizes, and her crisp green apple was on its way to international fame.

Rudolph Hass wasn't a famous botanist. He was a California mail carrier who bought avocado seedlings for a small orchard in La Habra Heights in the 1920s. One stubborn little tree resisted his attempts to graft another avocado variety onto it.

Luckily, Hass didn't chop it down. The tree produced delicious fruit with an unusual rough, dark skin, and his children reportedly loved it. Hass patented the variety in 1935, giving it his surname. Today, the Hass dominates the avocado business, but its namesake made relatively little money from the tree that transformed the industry.

The name behind America's famous dark-red cherry belonged to a 19th-century Chinese immigrant. Ah Bing worked for decades as foreman at horticulturist Seth Lewelling's nursery in Milwaukie, Oregon, where he supervised a large crew of Chinese workers.

Historical accounts differ over exactly how much credit Bing deserves for developing the variety, but they agree that Lewelling named it in his honor. Bing returned to China in 1889 and never came back to America. More than a century later, however, his name remains attached to one of the country's most important sweet cherries.

The boysenberry almost vanished before most people ever got a chance to taste one. California horticulturist Rudolph Boysen experimented with berry hybrids during the 1920s but eventually abandoned the project and the surviving plants.

USDA horticulturist George Darrow later became intrigued by reports of Boysen's enormous berries and enlisted grower Walter Knott to help find them. They discovered neglected vines on Boysen's former property, transplanted them, and brought them back to health. Knott sold the rediscovered fruit under Boysen's name, helping launch the business that became Knott's Berry Farm.

The clementine didn't take its name from a farmer named Clementine. Its namesake was Clément Rodier, a French Catholic missionary brother who worked at an orphanage in Misserghin, near Oran in what was then French Algeria.

Around the turn of the 20th century, a new type of mandarin appeared in the orphanage's citrus garden and came to be associated with Brother Clément. Its precise botanical origins have been debated, but his connection to the name is well established. The little seedless citrus traveled quickly: clementines were already being cultivated in Riverside, California, by 1909.

After settling in Dundela, Ontario, John McIntosh discovered wild apple seedlings growing on land he was clearing and transplanted several of them. One survived and produced particularly good fruit.

His family propagated the tree, and the McIntosh eventually became one of Canada's best-known apples. But the surname made another unexpected leap in the 20th century. Apple employee Jef Raskin named the Macintosh computer project after his favorite apple variety, changing the spelling. One chance seedling ultimately helped name a technological revolution.

Enoch Bartlett received one of the most successful cases of mistaken credit in horticultural history. The pear Americans call Bartlett was already an English variety known as Williams' Bon Chrétien when trees were brought to Massachusetts around 1799.

Bartlett later acquired the property where they were growing and, apparently unaware of their European identity, propagated and distributed the pear under his own name. Americans eventually discovered that Bartlett and Williams were the same variety, but the new name had already stuck. That's why Americans still buy Bartlett pears while British shoppers generally know them as Williams pears.

Imagine having a respectable career as a judge and being remembered mainly for a berry. That was the unusual fate of James Harvey Logan, a lawyer, judge, and enthusiastic amateur horticulturist in Santa Cruz, California.

In the 1880s, Logan experimented with berries in his garden and produced the reddish-purple fruit that became known as the loganberry. Its exact parentage has generated some historical debate, but Logan's role and the origin of its name are clear. His horticultural experiments proved remarkably durable: more than a century later, his surname still appears on jams, desserts, and berry plants.

Before Luther Burbank became one of America's most celebrated plant breeders, a potato helped finance his future. While farming in Lunenburg, Massachusetts, he noticed a rare seed ball growing on an Early Rose potato plant and experimented with its seeds.

One of the resulting plants produced unusually promising potatoes. Burbank sold the rights to his new variety for about $150: a modest-looking sum today, but enough to help fund his move to California in 1875. There he developed hundreds of plant varieties. The later Russet Burbank descended from his potato and became especially important in American agriculture.

Richard Cox was a retired English brewer who pursued horticulture at his property in Buckinghamshire, where he raised the apple that would eventually bear his surname around 1825.

The Cox's Orange Pippin became one of Britain's classic dessert apples, but Cox himself never witnessed the height of its fame. He died in 1845, while nurseryman Charles Turner introduced the variety commercially around 1850.

Warding off evil spirits

Beyond luck: The surprising origins of 12 popular superstitions

Image: Ellie Burgin

Many of our most enduring superstitions —such as refraining from stepping under a ladder or avoiding spilling salt— date back centuries. Many have to do with religion, while others we have borrowed from ancient cultures’ traditions. Yet, almost all of them have in common the need to prevent bad fortune or, on the contrary, to attract good luck. In this article, we have compiled 12 popular superstitions and their respective origins. You probably already follow many of them, but do you know the fascinating stories behind them?

Image: Bekky Bekks

Did you know that many buildings don't have a 13th floor, and many hotels skip rooms ending in 13? This is a superstition deeply rooted in Western culture! The bad reputation of the number 13 is at odds with the lucky number 12, which represents wholeness: the number of months of the year, the gods of Olympus, the signs of the zodiac, etc.

The number 13, on the other hand, is associated with a legend from Norse mythology. Loki, a shape-shifter god, was the thirteenth to arrive at a party, where he tricked another guest into killing the god Baldur. Does this story sound familiar? For Christianity, the apostle who betrayed Jesus, Judas, was the thirteenth guest at the Last Supper.

Image: Hannah Troupe

While felines were considered sacred animals in civilizations such as Ancient Egypt, in the Middle Ages, black cats began to be associated with witches.

During the time of the European Inquisition, many women were accused of practicing witchcraft, and their black feline companions suffered the same fate. The belief that black cats were the incarnation of witches and that crossing paths with one brought bad luck reached the United States at the time of the Salem witch trials.

Image: Villager Boy

We are all afraid to walk under a ladder, but very few know the origin of this superstition that extends across several cultures. For Christianity, anything in the shape of a triangle symbolizes the Holy Trinity. If you walk under a triangle-shaped ladder, you would be profaning the sacred and invoking the devil.

In medieval times, in turn, the space below an open ladder was associated with the bottom of the gallows. Thus, it was believed that a person who made the mistake of walking under a ladder would face their own death by hanging in the near future.

Image: Jordan McDonald

Some believe this superstition is ancient, dating back to the Egyptians, no less! As far as we know, in the Land of the Pharaohs, it was very common to use parasols to protect from the sun, but opening them indoors was considered an insult to the Sun God.

Another theory claims that our belief that opening an umbrella indoors brings bad luck originated in Victorian England. At the time, modern mechanical umbrellas began to become popular, and people considered it too dangerous to open them indoors. Pretty common sense, don't you think?

Image: Rijksmuseum, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

The idea that rabbits bring good luck is probably rooted in Celtic folklore. They believed that since rabbits live underground, they have a direct line of communication with the gods.

In more recent times, the animal's reputation for fertility made rabbit amulets popular among women hoping to conceive. Most rabbit's foot amulets today are made of fake fur and plastic, yet the superstition is as alive as ever.

Image: kropekk_pl

There are at least two theories that explain why spilling salt brings bad luck. In ancient civilizations such as Sumerian, Egyptian, and Greek, salt was an extremely expensive and coveted commodity, so spilling it was a huge waste.

The other theory states that salt was considered a magical substance used to perform rituals. Spilling it meant the devil was invited in. Luckily, if you make the mistake of spilling some salt, there is a way to nullify the bad luck: just throw a pinch over your left shoulder to scare away the bad spirits!

Image: Brandon Nickerson

In most English-speaking countries, it is almost an unconscious reflex to bless someone when they sneeze. Some believe this custom has its origin in an ancient superstition: the soul is separated from the body when we sneeze.

However, the most accurate theory states that this tradition began in the sixth century A.D. when a deadly disease began to spread through Italy. Pope Gregory the Great instructed people to pray for the sick when they sneezed with a simple but, according to him, infallible plea, "God bless you!"

Image: Kağan Karatay

According to this popular belief, breaking a mirror brings seven years of bad luck. But why seven and not six or eight? Believe it or not, there’s an explanation!

For one, in ancient times, the mirror was considered a literal reflection of the soul. This, added to the Roman myth that our body is "renewed" every seven years, fed the superstition that breaking a mirror means condemning your soul to seven years of bad luck.

Image: John Cardamone

Horseshoes are a classic symbol of good luck. But do you know where the tradition comes from? It originated in a Christian story about a 10th-century saint. According to legend, Dunstan was a blacksmith who one day was asked by the deceiving Devil to shoe his horse. The clever Dunstan, however, saw through the disguise and nailed the shoe to the Devil's foot instead.

The blacksmith finally agreed to remove the painful nails only if the Devil promised never to enter a house with a horseshoe hanging on the doorway. Still today, it is customary to hang a horseshoe with seven nails over the door to protect houses, barns, and stables from evil spirits.

Image: Djalma Paiva Armelin

In the rich tapestry of symbols created by humans throughout history, few are as universal as the four-leaf clover. This rare variant of the common clover has transcended its botanical virtues to become an emblem of good luck.

The tradition of the four-leaf clover dates back to antiquity. Druids, the high-ranking professional class in ancient Celtic cultures, considered them powerful amulets capable of warding off evil spirits and bringing good luck. The difficulty of finding one in the wild —an estimated 1 in 5,000— probably contributed to its mystique and value as an amulet.

Image: Leo_Visions

Knocking on wood to prevent disappointment is a very popular superstition in the United States. However, it has its origins in the ancient pagans who believed that spirits lived in trees. To invoke them and ask for protection, they would knock on the trunks. The ritual was also performed to thank them when something good happened.

Other cultures later adopted the tradition. Some Christians associated the gesture with the rite of touching a crucifix when taking an oath, while Jews connected it to knocking on the wooden doors of synagogues when seeking refuge during the Spanish Inquisition.

Image: Steve Wrzeszczynski

The custom of predicting the weather through animals was adapted from German culture. In the ancient tradition of Candlemas, celebrated on February 2, members of the clergy distributed blessed candles that were used to determine how long the winter would last.

In the same way, Germans also kept track of the hibernation time of animals. They used to closely follow badgers, but when settlers came to the United States and chose Pennsylvania as their home, they found groundhogs to be a better option.