Fruits and nuts with fancy names, but their origins are actually quite humble

Nuts and fruits are indispensable in Chinese New Year goods, such as American almonds, Hawaiian walnuts, Brazilian pine nuts, California pistachios, feijoas, New Zealand kiwifruit, and so on. These dried fruits or fruits with place-of-origin names sound far more upscale than ordinary nuts and fruits. In fact, these are all tricks! They have deeply deceived us for many years. Today, let us take a good look at those fruits and dried fruits with fancy names but actually ordinary origins.

American almonds actually originated in Asia, Hawaiian walnuts come from Australia, Brazilian pine nuts actually come from the Himalayas in Asia, California pistachios are originally Middle Eastern plants too, Fiji has never had a fruit called feijoa, and the hometown of New Zealand kiwifruit is China...

1. American almonds - actually Xinjiang badam

American almonds - the name makes people think these are almonds produced from apricots from the United States. In fact, the United States did not have this kind of plant that could produce "large almonds" in the past. The true identity of the American almond plant is almond (Prunus dulcis), a plant in the Rosaceae family, Prunus genus, Amygdalus subgenus. It is also called badam apricot, native to Asia Minor, Syria, and Iran, and the Xinjiang region of China is also one of its places of origin. Almond kernels are commonly known in Xinjiang as badam or badamu. In Persian, almond is called badam, and this name actually comes from the Persian term for almond. However, this plant is not distributed in North America. Likewise, although this dried fruit is called an almond, strictly speaking, it is not an apricot.

Almond is an ancient traditional nut tree species, cultivated early in West Asia and Central Asia. It is a nut-type fruit tree mainly grown for its kernels. The edible part of almond comes from its drupe. Due to long-term cultivation, many edible, medicinal, and ornamental types have been produced around the world.

Compared with the names almond and badam, "American almond" is more widely known. The reason for this name is that after the United States introduced almonds from the Middle East in the early 19th century, through seed selection and breeding and commercial variety development and cultivation, by the 1980s it had formed the American almond industry, and the United States became the world's largest producer of almond kernels. After commercial development, almond and badam thus gained a very fashionable commercial name, "American almond."

2. "Brazilian pine nuts" - from the Himalayan region

Brazilians say they have never seen this fruit called "Brazilian pine nut," which means Brazilian pine nuts never grow in Brazil. All pine plants on Earth are actually distributed in the Northern Hemisphere. In other words, there is not even a single pine tree in the Southern Hemisphere. (The scene was once very awkward~)

There is a tree in Brazil called Brazilian pine in English, and translated it is indeed Brazilian pine, but this plant is not of the pine genus at all; it belongs to the Araucaria genus. The English name of Brazilian pine nut is chilgoza pine. Chilgoza is a place name, from Urdu, which is the national language of Pakistan. The real name of Brazilian pine nut is Tibetan white pine (Pinus gerardiana), a plant in the Pinaceae family, Pinus genus, distributed in the northwestern Himalayan region from India and Pakistan to Afghanistan, and it is also distributed in China, mainly produced in the Zanda mountain area of western Tibet.

Tibetan white pine has very strict requirements for its growing environment. Although its taste is first-rate, its yield is not high. Most of the Brazilian pine nuts we eat today come from the primitive forests of Himalayan mountain countries. This pine nut is one of the most important cash crops for local tribal members. Tibetan white pine seeds are very expensive, with prices reaching 20 USD to 53 USD per kilogram.

"Brazilian pine nut" is the commercial name of Tibetan white pine. A commercial name does not have to be accurate, but it must make the product seem noble. Especially for something like pine nuts that sells for such a high price, it must have a particularly rare exotic feel. Thus, in China, the pine nuts of Tibetan white pine have been marketed by merchants as "Brazilian pine nuts."

3. California pistachios - travelers from Central Asia

The hard shell of the "pistachio" splits open at the front after ripening, revealing the greenish-red kernel inside, hence the very festive and auspicious commercial name "pistachio" (happy nut). When pistachios first entered the Chinese market, in order to show their wealthy, beautiful, and upscale identity, they also had another commercial name, namely "American pistachio" or "California pistachio," so that many people thought pistachios were a plant from California in the United States.

In fact, the tree that can produce pistachios did not originally come from the United States, but from Central Asia. This nut was cultivated and eaten in Central Asia very early. Archaeology shows that "pistachios" had already become a common food for local people as early as 6750 BC. During the Roman period, pistachios entered Rome from the Syria area. Even today, Iran is still the world's largest pistachio producer.

From 1904 to 1905, Americans introduced cold-tolerant "pistachios" from China to California and gradually began to develop the pistachio planting industry. The history of pistachio cultivation in the United States is actually not long; it was only planted on a small scale in California in the 1950s. However, pistachios becoming a dried fruit industry indeed cannot be separated from the vigorous promotion of American merchants. California growers, in a very short period of more than twenty years, promoted this nut from Asia and achieved great commercial success. But in any case, pistachios are indeed native plants of Asia.

4. "Macadamia nuts" - originally from Australia

"Macadamia nuts" are called one of the most delicious nuts in the world, but their place of origin is not Hawaii, but Australia. Their original name is simply macadamia. This plant was first discovered by British botanist and explorer Allan Cunningham in 1828 in the rainforest south of Brisbane, Australia. Although local people had always gathered this nut to eat, given that Australia has too many poisonous plants, Cunningham at the time did not dare to try its taste.

The Westerners who discovered that "macadamia nuts" were delicious, edible, and recorded it were at the Brisbane Botanic Gardens in Australia. In 1858, a mischievous boy in the botanic gardens happily ate the introduced macadamia nuts in the gardens and remained lively and jumping around, with no adverse reactions at all. So everyone knew that this nut was really delicious. Later, it was trial-planted on a small scale in Australia. Later still, because "macadamia nuts" had once been widely planted in Hawaii, gradually "Hawaiian nuts" replaced its original name "macadamia nuts" and sold well around the world.

5. New Zealand kiwifruit - kiwifruit from the mountains and wilds of China

Before 1904, New Zealand did not have the fruit "kiwifruit" that later became world-famous. That year, a New Zealand woman named Isabel brought the delicious kiwifruit introduced from Yichang, Hubei back to New Zealand, and from then on began the history of commercial kiwifruit cultivation. Because this fruit developed by New Zealand horticultural growers was brownish-yellow in color, had short fuzz on the skin, and the remaining fruit stalk resembled a "bird's beak," it was called kiwifruit because of its strange appearance. The great name of kiwifruit thus spread throughout the world.

The name kiwifruit has existed since ancient times. In the Ming Dynasty, Li Shizhen wrote very clearly in the Compendium of Materia Medica: "Its shape is like a pear, its color is like a peach, and macaques like to eat it, hence the various names." Kiwifruit developed from a purely wild plant into today's much-loved market fruit and has important commercial value. Kiwifruit introduced from China received commercial development in New Zealand and formed a huge industry, bringing wealth to New Zealand.

When it entered the Chinese market again, faced with this upscale foreign fruit, most people mistakenly thought it originated in New Zealand. However, today, kiwifruit has also become an important cultivated fruit in China, and we also possess unparalleled kiwifruit resources. Therefore, in the future, the world kiwifruit market and variety development will inevitably return to its homeland.

6. Feijoa - all because of Chinese-style translation

Feijoa, many people are not very familiar with it. "Feijoa" is a tropical and subtropical fruit. Because it was commercially bred by New Zealanders, and the fruit is sweet and juicy with a fragrant smell, it is also hailed as the "king of New Zealand fruits." However, feijoa has nothing to do with Fiji, and its place of origin is not New Zealand either. It is native to Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Argentina in South America. The reason it is called feijoa is that its former Latin scientific name was Feijoa sellowiana, and because of this Feijoa, people took the words too literally and misread it as Fiji.

Feijoa also has another name, feijoa (Feijoa sellowiana). Feijoa is cultivated in Yunnan and South China in China. As a niche fruit, this "fruit tree" is mainly used for courtyard landscaping. Of course, compared with the ordinary feijoa, adding a geographical name from thousands of miles away immediately makes its value different.