Long, flat and bumpy
The following will contain words of scientific complexity including flapdoodle and watermelon.
Yellow wax beans such as Marvel of Venice produce vines which grow as tall as your trellis and then flop down and keep growing sideways or elsewhere. The actual beans inside the pod have been accused of being ellipsoids on a curved major axis. That means they are bean-shaped, and there’s a formula for that. The pods, however, are long, flat and bumpy, and it is there we will focus – the shapes of things.
Many varieties of beans are not flat but long, plump and bumpy. My southern Arkansas aunts called them string beans. I have never seen bumpy string, but who among us has seen everything.
Snow peas start out long, flat and bumpy until middle age when, like Arkansas uncles, they begin to swell and sweeten. Silk trees have flat pods that do not sweeten.
Not all bean or pea pods are flat, however. Garbanzo pods, for example, resemble tiny fuzzy watermelons. To explain, typical watermelons shapes (scientifically speaking) are like if you took a perfectly round melon and stretched it to the plump length of your desire. Of course, Nature also makes Moon and Stars watermelons and other varieties which are spherical (think volleyball). And to be absurd, there are folks who grow watermelons in square cages to make square (!) watermelons, and that is just not natural, although they would not roll off the table.
If you are kneading a glump of dough, like we all do on Monday evenings, suddenly on the table will be dough that is sort of rounded and flatter on top with creases on the side. Tomatoes in this shape are obviously called beefsteak.
Banana Legs tomatoes are cylindrical with a rounded bottom, and cherry tomatoes are usually spherical, a technical term meaning round like a marble, or marble-rific.
A Black Krim tomato resembles four or five small flat-topped globes joined together in the middle like a patty pan squash, an adjective derived from French bakers who made cakes in a scalloped pan. Even with my extensive baking experience, I had no idea. Several winter squash varieties are also scalloped in this fashion, and I think the term patty pan could be used more often, such as, “Your assessment of the political landscape is patty pan at best.”
Okra – a member of the hibiscus, cacao and cotton family – produces pods that are faceted and tapered to a point. If you were wondering, cacao seed pods look like red or yellow footballs and might grow to a plump 12 inches long.
Peppers express themselves in so many ways it is difficult to conceptualize pepperness. When someone says, “My sister just got a new dog,” that eliminates camels, penguins and gila monsters but leaves plenty to the imagination. Chihuahuas and St. Bernards are both dogs, and cayennes and bells are both peppers. Science says so.
And bell peppers (“Ring them bells,” says Bob) are not like any ding dong bells I have seen. History maintains if Shakespeare ate a sweet pepper, it would have been shaped like a bell – small at the top and flared at the bottom. Where’d they go? Nowadays, bell peppers are ridged, elongated tasty things of almost every color in a small crayon box, and imagine Shakespeare’s iambic pentameter exuberance toward our modern bells: “Bells ring sweet like morning heaven’s delight,” for example.
Modern-shaped Napoleon bells are elongated to six inches; Calwonder and Bull Nose bells mature shorter but are as sweet. Other pepper varieties such as Lesya look like plump tear drops and Corbacci and Murasaki peppers are long, slender sweet peppers which resemble hot varieties like Cayenne, which was named for a town in South America.
Which brings us to Brazilian Starfish and Aji Cachucha peppers, both round, flat and seriously scalloped, known in academia as freewheeling flapdoodles, a term seldom heard in non-technical conversation.
Nature adores surprising shapes, and I have yet to mention warty cucurbits or tomatoes shaped like mandolins.