Food
Where does Granny Smith apple come from?
The tart green Granny Smith sprang up by a creek in Eastwood, now a suburb of Sydney, in 1868. Maria Ann 'Granny' Smith had tossed out some French crab apples there, and she grew the lucky seedling on.
More Food
Food
Mango
📍 NE India, Bangladesh & Myanmar
Mangoes originated in the region between northeastern India, Bangladesh and northwestern Myanmar. The English word came via Portuguese from Malayalam “manga”.
Food
Feijoa
📍 Southern Brazil & Uruguay
New Zealanders love feijoas so much that many think they are a Kiwi fruit, but they come from the highlands of southern Brazil and Uruguay. Plants taken from Uruguay to France in 1890 later reached California and then New Zealand.
Food
Horned melon (kiwano)
📍 Kalahari & southern Africa
The spiky horned melon grows wild around the Kalahari, where it is one of the few sources of water in the dry season. It was the 'African horned cucumber' until the 1980s, when it was renamed kiwano for export from New Zealand.
More from Oceania
Invention
Didgeridoo
📍 Arnhem Land, Australia
Aboriginal peoples of northern Australia, probably in Arnhem Land, developed it centuries before Europeans arrived. The name 'didgeridoo' isn't Aboriginal; it's an imitative English word first printed in 1908.
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Word
Taboo (the word)
📍 Tonga
Captain Cook picked up 'taboo' in Tonga in 1777, when Tongan nobles he'd invited to dinner wouldn't eat because they were taboo: forbidden. Similar words exist across Polynesia, like Hawaiian kapu.
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Word
Kangaroo (the word)
📍 Cooktown, Queensland, Australia
Joseph Banks wrote down 'kanguru' in 1770 at today's Cooktown, where Cook's ship was being repaired, from the Guugu Yimithirr word gangurru. The tale that it means 'I don't know' is a myth.