What’s in a Name?

Flashy Trout Back.  Blushed butter.  Red Sails.  These are a few of the lettuce varieties that we’ll be planting this season.

Who names these vegetables?  I can just picture a group of nerdy seedologists (what do they call the people who create new varieties of vegetable seed?) sitting around tossing out kooky names for the newest melon they developed.   It’s not like naming your child.  There are a million websites and books that help you find the perfect name for your little booboo.  So how does a lettuce come to be known as Flashy Trout Back?

If I were naming vegetables, I’d probably go straight to the list of top ten baby names and start there.  A green bean named Jacob, a radish named Isabella.  I think that Emma would be a great name for a carrot.

Here are some of my favorites.  Can you match the name with the vegetable? 1) Hungarian Hot Wax, 2) Igor, 3) Edith, 4) Yaya, 5) Princess la Ratte, 6) Purple Dove, 7) Matilda, 8) Luscious, 9) Mustang, 10) Leonardo

a) Corn, b) Radicchio, c) Brussels sprouts, d) Bean, e) Carrots, f) Red pepper, g) Green Bean, h) Onion, i) Cauliflower, j) Fingerling Potato

Incidentlally, if you google “most popular baby names” you get 502,000 results.  If you google “most popular vegetable names” you get 1.

Answers: 1-f, 2-c, 3-i, 4-e, 5-j, 6-d, 7-g, 8-a, 9-h, 10-b