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

By: Jude

Jude — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 03:36:31 +0000

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.

By: Melinda

Melinda — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 17:55:04 +0000

Is the watermelon a gourd?

By: bruce8505

bruce8505 — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 19:36:22 +0000

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.

By: L

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 00:47:08 +0000

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

By: bobby

bobby — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 19:37:52 +0000

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

By: drinkyclown

drinkyclown — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 02:07:03 +0000

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.

By: MightyCow

MightyCow — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 00:02:44 +0000

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.

By: emily

emily — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 23:33:06 +0000

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.

By: Jay

Jay — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 19:04:38 +0000

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.

By: Sofar

Sofar — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 18:29:31 +0000

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?

By: brandon

brandon — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 18:11:46 +0000

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.

By: SiteSeer

SiteSeer — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 18:08:10 +0000

^ hear hear.

By: Thad

Thad — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 16:13:32 +0000

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

By: NeuroGirl

NeuroGirl — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 16:11:19 +0000

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

By: Meighan

Meighan — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 15:21:01 +0000

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.

By: Klink-O

Klink-O — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 14:17:38 +0000

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

By: Becca

Becca — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 13:41:07 +0000

seriously.

By: Spark

Spark — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 13:04:27 +0000

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

By: Sid Morrison

Sid Morrison — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 12:07:47 +0000

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

By: greg

greg — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 11:52:36 +0000

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.

By: emptyminded

emptyminded — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 11:39:45 +0000

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

By: bean

bean — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 10:56:16 +0000

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

By: Gabriel

Gabriel — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 10:15:13 +0000

Tomatoes are also fruits, by the way.

By: Padraig

Padraig — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 10:01:37 +0000

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