Trivia: Oklahoma Declared Watermelon as its Official State ... Vegetable!

1. Padraig
   March 14th, 2008 at 5:01 am

   I thought watermelons, as well as cucumbers, were berries?

2. Gabriel
   March 14th, 2008 at 5:15 am

   Tomatoes are also fruits, by the way.

3. bean
   March 14th, 2008 at 5:56 am

   New Mexico declared a country in South America as its state vegetable?

4. emptyminded
   March 14th, 2008 at 6:39 am

   Another case of politicians creating reality from their own distorted beliefs. And what's with all the onions being named state vegetables?

5. greg
   March 14th, 2008 at 6:52 am

   i dont say much on this site, but i have to say that cucumbers are technically fruit, which by their logic makes a watermelon a fruit like everyone thought to begin with.

6. Sid Morrison
   March 14th, 2008 at 7:07 am

   And they wonder why folks make fun of Okies. It seems the smart ones left during the Dustbowl years and haven't returned.

7. Spark
   March 14th, 2008 at 8:04 am

   We need to take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

8. Becca
   March 14th, 2008 at 8:41 am

   seriously.

9. Klink-O
   March 14th, 2008 at 9:17 am

   Washington DC is full of vegetables. But they wear suits and pass laws for everyone else to follow.

10. Meighan
    March 14th, 2008 at 10:21 am

    Botanically speaking a watermelon is a fruit, because it comes from the reproductive part of the plant. Also in the culinary sense.. it's also a fruit, because it's sweet and eaten as a fruit. I don't know what Oklahoma is thinking.. I guess they are getting down to the very basic "animal, vegetable, mineral" argument, and if you go down that road, yes, I suppose a watermelon is a vegetable.

11. NeuroGirl
    March 14th, 2008 at 11:11 am

    Watermelon as a vegetable and the Sally Kern thing all in one week... I'm officially crossing out Oklahoma on the destinations list.

12. Thad
    March 14th, 2008 at 11:13 am

    Aren't we missing the larger point...Watermelons is good!

13. SiteSeer
    March 14th, 2008 at 1:08 pm

    ^ hear hear.

14. brandon
    March 14th, 2008 at 1:11 pm

    http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vegetable
    Webster defines a vegetable as "1 a: of, relating to, constituting, or growing like plants b: consisting of plants".

    http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fruit
    Fruits are defined as "1 a: a product of plant growth (as grain, vegetables, or cotton) b (1): the usually edible reproductive body of a seed plant; especially : one having a sweet pulp associated with the seed "

    So all fruits are also vegetables, but not all vegetables are fruits. So the Oklahomans aren't crazy, they just read the dictionary and decide to fuck with all the people who consider them nothing more than flyover country.

15. Sofar
    March 14th, 2008 at 1:29 pm

    Is this going to be another case in which everyone who really just can't stand not to be privy to some special secret information that makes them smarter than everyone else in the room is going to start claiming watermelons are vegetables?

16. Jay
    March 14th, 2008 at 2:04 pm

    If I remember correctly, I think somebody wanted to make it the state fruit, but that was already the strawberry. So, in order to force the issue he changed it to vegetable. I don't know. Politicians do stupid things in every state. It's their stupidity that makes them want to be politicians in the first place.

    I'm a current OK resident (I work for an oil company) but I'm not from here.

17. emily
    March 14th, 2008 at 6:33 pm

    I work with produce all day, and I am a word nerd.

    A berry is a small, pulpy fruit with a pit(i.e. seed) in the center. Therefore, a grape is a berry, and a strawberry is not. Melons are not berries, they're not small.

    Furthermore, the cucumber is a member of the melon family, it's just elongated. A cucumber is a fruit because fruits have seeds, vegetables do not. A watermelon is NOT a vegetable. (Even seedless ones have smallish seeds.) A tomato is a fruit (it has seeds).

    The second webster's definition is the abstract concept, i.e. the fruits of your labor, fruits of the harvest.

18. MightyCow
    March 14th, 2008 at 7:02 pm

    It's sad that a given discussion on a single website has more coherent thought than the entire group of elected representatives of a US state.

19. drinkyclown
    March 14th, 2008 at 9:07 pm

    Watermelon is definitely a kind of berry, definitely a fruit, and definitely vegetable in that it is neither mineral nor animal.
    The fruit of a plant is the matured pistil of the flower.

20. bobby
    March 15th, 2008 at 2:37 pm

    Anything with a seed is considered a fruit
    we really need to educate our leaders

21. L
    March 15th, 2008 at 7:47 pm

    What do they do if they need a state fruit as well? (Don't tell me... they pick lettuce, right?)

22. bruce8505
    March 17th, 2008 at 2:36 pm

    Fruit is a botanical and culinary term, vegetable is only a culinary term. In the botanical sense, a vegetable can be a fruit, a root, a fungi, a leaf... It is called a vegetable because of how it is used in the kitchen, not in the garden, therefore, I'm pretty sure a watermelon is not a vegetable.

23. Melinda
    March 29th, 2009 at 12:55 pm

    Is the watermelon a gourd?

24. Jude
    June 15th, 2009 at 10:36 pm

    I applaud Oklahoma's category-redefining efforts, which I have just (belatedly) discovered. More of this capricious sort of thing from our legislators might make me pay attention to politics: if I could turn on the news and find out California had renamed itself Atlantis or that the IQ of Canada's Prime Minister was now going to determine the value of its dollar ... the news might get turned on.

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