[Sca-cooks] Looking for references to orange carrots
Terry Decker
t.d.decker at att.net
Sat Feb 27 22:00:56 PST 2010
> According to the _National Geographic_, modern bright-orange sweet
> carrots occurred as a true mutation discovered in an English field in the
> mid 1700s. Because they were so startlingly sweet, they spread like
> wildfire and caused the extinction of hundreds of other carrot varieties,
> including the earlier 'rusty' orange carrots, which-- like most carrots in
> the middle ages-- weren't at all sweet.
>
> Yours in service to both the Societies of which I am a member-
> (Friend) Honour Horne-Jaruk, R.S.F.
> Alizaundre de Brebeuf, C.O.L. S.C.A.- AKA Una the wisewoman, or That Pict
Without an attribution or source, I consider the statement that orange
carrots originating in an English field in the mid-1700s doubtful. All
modern orange carrots appear to stem from hybrids created in the
Netherlands, the earliest of which is first described in 1721. However, the
orange carrots in the Netherlands appear to pre-date their description by at
least 100 years. Evidence of orange carrots written in English can be found
in James Sutherland's Hortus Medicus Edinburgensis of 1683 about fifty years
prior to the mutation referenced by National Geographic.
And just to make things more fun, John Stolcyzk has located a reference in
the Bodelian Library, MS Ashmole 1431, folios 21v-22r (Bodley Herbal and
Bestiary: MS Bodley 130) written around 1100, which pictures orange
carrots. The drawings might be an artifact of faded red, but it is
interesting.
Bear
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