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  • From: "Brungardt, Sam" <Sam.Brungardt@state.mn.us>
  • To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [NAFEX] new coffee table book on fruit
  • Date: Tue, 3 Aug 2004 08:59:44 -0500

Title: new coffee table book on fruit

I haven't seen this book yet, but I thought you all would like to know about it. -- Sam Brungardt, St. Paul, Minn. (USDA Zone 4b)


A rather elegant tome on fruit
By PATRICK BUTTERS
August 2, 2004
"Fruit: An Illustrated History," by Peter Blackburne-Maze (Firefly Books, $60)
There's a specific title for you: "Fruit: An Illustrated History."  What do you think the book is about?
It may not seem like much, only 336 pages, but it's a monster of a book, like 2 feet by 2 feet.  It's really rather elegant, actually.  The color illustrations have that reserved Audubon feel, quaint but not too splashy.

Author Blackburne-Maze selected the illustrations from the Lindley Library of the Royal Historical Society. (You could tell because the foreword refers to them as "colour."  It's all rather British.)

Chapters are divided into types of fruit: "pome," "stone," "berry" and "exotic."  Blackburne-Maze, "a total fruit enthusiast," says preface author Brian F. Self, indeed delivers on enthusiasm for fruit without inundating us with his obsession with kumquats.

The author starts off by addressing the obvious.  What is a fruit and when would we know it?  A fruit, he says, is a "more or less fleshy pod, capsule or some other body produced by a plant in which it forms and carries its seeds."  So, yes, the tomato and even the lovely cucumber are considered fruits.  But not in this book.  However, you will see the avocado, olive, cashew, walnut and almond in this book.

The guy tells some interesting stories and doesn't mind calling up obvious pop-culture references just to make it interesting. And he's kind of a wisenheimer, like in this reference to breadfruit:

"The breadfruit's main claim to fame is that it was one of the causes of the 'Mutiny on the Bounty.'  The plants that were using the crew's drinking water were on their way from the Pacific to the West Indies when they were thrown over the side along with Captain Bligh (though he had the comparative luxury of a rowing boat)."

Of course, if he mentioned Moe conking Larry in the section about the coconut, that would probably be pushing things a little too far.

(E-mail Patrick Butters (at)shns.com or visit www.shns.com.)




  • [NAFEX] new coffee table book on fruit, Brungardt, Sam, 08/03/2004

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