Trivia: Did You Know That…

Watermelon has seeds (the usual signifier of a fruit) and is juicy, so it’s the fruit of the watermelon vine says one faction. No, no, it’s related to squash and pumpkin, so it’s a vegetable, says another. (Technically, this group might be right.) Oh, just call it a “fregetable” and enjoy it says a third contingent. Let’s hereby declare watermelon a fregetable, folks!

Conventional advice says the way to tell if a watermelon is ripe is to thump it, using the thumb and forefinger. In general, an unripe melon makes a ringing sound when thumped; a ripe melon makes a dull, somewhat muffled sound. It helps to have three or four watermelons to thump for comparison. The problem, of course, is that it takes a good many years of watermelon thumping to learn the necessary subtle distinctions between a “not-quite, but-almost” sound and a “ripe-and-ready” sound. A blind piano tuner’s advice: A watermelon’s at its peak when it thumps B-flat.

A more consistently reliable and ascertainable sign of ripeness is to check a watermelon’s underside where it sat while growing. As a watermelon ripens, this white, smooth “ground spot” begins turning yellow and gets a rougher texture. So, to pick a good melon, roll several over and pick the ripest by its slightly yellowish underbelly.

It’s thanks to lycopene, which occurs naturally in red-fleshed fruits and vegetables—including watermelon—and gives them their red color. Lycopene has well-known health benefits, as it’s an antioxidant (which counter the overactive byproducts of digestion), and antioxidants are associated with a decreased risk of cancer and cardiovascular disease. The good-health news: Watermelon is especially high in lycopene. “[By weight], on average, watermelon has about 40% more lycopene than raw tomatoes,” according to reporting by the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture).

• In 1471, Pope Paul II “gorged on melons one sultry night . . . and promptly died of apoplexy,” according to Sylvia Lovegren in Melon: A Global History.
• A tombstone in the U. K.’s Chigwell Cemetery is said to read:
  This disease you ne’er heard tell on
  I died from eating too much mellon,
  Be careful then all you that feed, I
  Suffered because I was too greedy.
  (But maybe not. When the Chigwell Parish Council was queried recently about the inscription, a representative responded, “I would like to be able to confirm what you have heard, but unfortunately as far as I am aware, there is no gravestone with such an inscription….)
• Meanwhile, in the U.S., somewhere in New Jersey, there’s said to be a tombstone that reads:
  She was not smart, she was not fair,
  But hearts with grief for her are swellin’,
  All empty stands her little chair,
  She died of eatin’ water melon.

• While we’re on gravestones, someone who didn’t die from eating too much watermelon was the Virginia folk artist Miles Carpenter. Instead, he was known for his watermelon-slice wood carvings. He was so identified with them—they usually featured a bite already eaten—that when he died in 1985 his family had a watermelon slice with a bite taken out carved on his gravestone in Waverly, Virginia.
• And then there’s the kids’ camp song about a gravestone planting, complete with slurpy sound effects:
  You can plant a watermelon up above my grave,
  And let the juice (slurrrrrp!) through;
  You can plant a watermelon up above my grave,
  That’s all I ask of you;
  Now chocolate-chip cookies, they taste might fine,
  But nothing’s quite as good as a watermelon vine;
  You can plant a watermelon up above my grave,
  And let the juice (slurrrrrp!) through.