To clarify- chestnuts come from about ten (give or take) species of tree. The AMERICAN chestnut went effectively extinct in the early 20th century. There was a blight that killed the trees. Today, few survive and they don’t tend to live long enough to get bigger than a bush or to make nuts or reproduce. The pestilence that wiped them out still exists so trying to regrow them in any number hadn’t proved very practical until recently when efforts have had some success. So you can still get chestnuts- just likely not American chestnuts.
With bananas- they are clones. We bred bananas to the point they can’t reproduce on their own. That makes bananas very susceptible to illness because all the bananas are... the same banana more or less. So the banana that candies and the like are flavored after- went effectively extinct within many living humans lifetimes.
Why wasn’t it a huge deal? Because most people through much of the world have no idea most fruits or vegetables exist. Asides regional staples that tend to be considered rare abroad- there was a huge shift in farming within a lifetime ago. Commercial mass farming. People know what a “carrot” looks like. It’s orange. It has green leaves. Not so much. Some carrots. But they come in all colors. Commercial farms try to produce large numbers of fast cheap grow that people will buy.
Oh wow.
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We made banana flavouring in chemistry, but I never understood why it refused to smell like real bananas.
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Dayum, does that mean we need to develop a new chemistry experiment and mix other ethyls etc. to get the new banana?
So they “brand” produce. It’s more complex, time consuming, expensive, to produce varieties of a plant. Thousands of identical ones is the goal. Put 5 types of carrot on the shelf and odds are one will be most popular and one will be least. You lose a lot of stock and floor space. Put one carrot. People will buy that carrot. Easy.
Then there’s shelf appeal. Some countries like the EU have specifications for produces appearance. They have a gauge for the curve of a banana there. Any fruit that is too curves or not curved enough can’t be sold. Colors, etc. all spec’d. So growers and engineers try to make strains that are consistent and have qualities that make them appealing to consumers. They need to “look fresh” even if what people think a “good” fruit looks like and whatnot actually does aren’t the same. So they make the fruit look good.
Modern folks would be lost in a produce store of the 1950’s or earlier. “Heirloom tomatoes” are supposed to be like what tomatoes used to be like. They aren’t exactly. Like Coke where they lost the recipe when they went to “new coke” and then had to try and remake the original so we got “Coke Classic.” The tomato was continually bred for size, shape, and above all deep red color. The problem is that in doing so the fruit lost most of its taste and texture. Became a watery and near flavorless zombie.
The size, shape, color, and even names of fruits and vegetables have changed greatly in a relatively short span. In many Spanish languages there is no word for lime. Lemons and limes are often called lemons. Sometimes limes are called lima. In some South American countries- limes are called lemons and lemons are called lima. They come from the same fruit more or less- like many citrus fruits, with the varieties being a result of cross breeding or genetic engineering. In fact- the root word for lemon was once what ALL citrus fruit was called. So you could ask for a “lemon” and get an orange!
The British found lemons as the cure for scurvy- then forgot it. Then found it, then lost it and had scurvy again because a lemon and a lime were the same thing linguistically and from the same fruit- but limes don’t have the vitamin C of lemons- so you needed more lime than lemon to get the vitamin C. They didn’t know this at the time and it wasn’t an issue if you ate enough lime- only if you assumed you were safe off of an equivalent Portion of lime to lemon.
The history of agriculture and especially that in modern times is rather interesting and often overlooked because... we don’t tend to think much about it. Food is food. We don’t tend to notice small changes over time, and if you were born into a modern agricultural world like most people today, you don’t notice because a tomato looks and tastes the same to you it always did more or less. Older people notice the differences more- but not a lot to be done about it, and regardless it’s been 40+ years since you could walk into any old place and get the kind of fruit that was sold before modernized methods and strains. So you get used to change. Even still you might occasionally hear an older person gripe about how this or that isn’t the way it was when they were young. Although... memory is also a funny thing so you might chalk it up to nostalgia tinting history too!
Such cruel fate
.
We made banana flavouring in chemistry, but I never understood why it refused to smell like real bananas.
.
Dayum, does that mean we need to develop a new chemistry experiment and mix other ethyls etc. to get the new banana?