A Fruit By Any Other Name

By Becky Nelson
BRAMBLINGS
Strawberries are in season, and boy do they smell and taste good. Strawberries aren’t berries. They are an aggregate fruit. Bananas are not fruit, they are berries, along with grapes, kiwis, apples and watermelon. This means they develop from a single flower with a single ovary and consist of an outer layer (skin or rind) an inner layer of flesh and a bunch of seeds inside. Blueberries are true berries as are cranberries.

Raspberries and blackberries, like the strawberries are actually “aggregate fruit” with each little pocket of flesh with a seed inside, or like the strawberry with the seed outside, a separate fruit. Oranges are berries, but a subset of berries because even though they develop from a single flower ovary, they are segmented, making them a wholly different thing.

I don’t think any of us are going to change the way we see or describe these edible delicacies as we pluck them from trees or plants or shrubs and savor their distinctive tastes and aromas. I am not about to call strawberries “strawfruit” any more than I will call watermelons “waterberries.” The names they are known by have hundreds or thousands of years behind them, and it would take some real doing and manipulating to change our fruit/berry lexicon, nor would it be worth the time to change.

This is how I feel about a number of endeavors in the world to change the language of long published books to be more contemporary, to remove books from library shelves or to cover up the history of the times in which they were written in order to be politically or socially correct. Bah, humbug. By changing words or pictures or statues or any number of effigies, symbols or descriptions, we are doing ourselves a disservice.

If reading a book to a youngster and you happen to come upon a phrase or a description or an action that offends our current sophistication, status, sense of propriety or political ideology, instead of modernizing it (which will detract from the historical time in which it is written), perhaps we should use these things as teaching moments. For example, “back when this was written, times were very different than they are today. They lived hard lives. They had no running water. They had no television or internet or newspapers or even many books to get their news or know what was what in the world. Their worlds were small, and they didn’t know any better. Now we know this word or this phrase or this description is not accurate or acceptable, and we now know these practices were insensitive, evil or mean spirited. Today we would say things differently and treat people differently. What do you think is a better way to say this than is in the book?”

Why not spark the curiosity of our youth or our populace to dig in a little deeper and learn about the historic world? Why do we always want to erase the past instead of investigating it and learning from it so that when we go forward we will perhaps do a better job of things? How do we know things are “wrong” if we erase or adapt the literature, tear down the statues or cover up past mistakes?

I live in a true living history book. My ancestors started farming here almost 250 years ago. We have old letters, old photos, old artifacts from times past, some of them not so desirable in these times of greater sophistication and intellect…or so we think. I don’t want to cover these up because they are not “appropriate” for the day, but I want to celebrate those folks for who they were, what was important to them, how they maneuvered through their world and the importance they play in my very existence.

The men of the family were not particularly understanding or appreciative of strong-willed, outspoken women like myself, but that makes them no less important in the string of happenings that led to me.

Maybe these folks called strawberries something different. Some of the first folks in my line probably never heard of a kiwi or ate a dragonfruit. They couldn’t have imagined some of the things we do or the attitudes we have or the way we think. But, they are no less important than we are today, and even if we try to erase the past, it happened and it was. It is not my fault nor should I carry the blame for what they did, but it is my obligation to learn from what they did wrong and correct it or enhance the greater good in my own few years on the earth. We can call a strawberry a strawfruit or an orange a berry, but it won’t erase the history of the fruit or berry. Let’s use the old relics and our discussions of the past as talking points, learning points and as a track for the future, not as attempts to placate our sensibilities or to re-write history.