A garden like a rainbow
The first time my older son brought home his chemistry textbook, like any parent, I read through it cover to cover. The brief section that has remained with me was about how languages around the world describe colors. Samples from 100 languages showed they all had words referring to black and white. Languages that had a third word for a color, and not all of them did, referred to red. Languages with fourth and fifth words for color had words for yellow and green. Beyond that were blue, then brown and the rest of them such as puce, chartreuse and aubergine…
… and speaking of eggplants, here are a thought or two about colors in the vegetable world. The French word for the fruit of an eggplant plant is aubergine. Linguistic explorers have traced that word to a Sanskrit word, so eggplants are historical. English speakers adopted aubergine for a shade of purple apparently not previously named. In addition, aubergine is fun to say. Hey, let’s all say it right now… aubergine (makes me chuckle).
The English word “eggplant” originated because the fruit at the time resembled eggs, so they were little white ovoids.
I think plants left to their own devices will find their own colors. Professional plant breeders have created pepper and tomato colors that outscore a crayon box, but plants know what to do on their own. Heirloom varieties of eggplants from Japan are apple green, the darkest purple and even white. There are orange varieties around the Mediterranean, and residents in northern Africa historically used extracts of orange eggplants as a medicine to combat oxidative stress and as a calmative.
Strains of every color have streaks and slashes because Nature is an artist.
Vegetables get colors from chemical processes. An unripe tomato might be green until the chlorophyll fades away and is replaced by carotenoids for yellow and orange or anthocyanins for red or purple. I had a volunteer pepper plant produce pale orange fruit I had never seen before, and the parents must have been a red hot bell type and a golden cayenne. Offspring from the cross gets paler each year.
The phytochemicals that lead to different colors also contribute to daily nutrition in different ways, and the vegetables and fruits with the brightest colors have the most vitamins, antioxidants and market value. From the green in veggies we get potassium and vitamin K for heart and circulatory protection, plus calcium and antioxidants. So, thanks, green leafy things. Brussels sprouts, too.
Yellow and orange vegetables such as summer squash and carrots have vitamin A to help me see you better. Yellow squash is known for the anti-inflammatory compound cucurbitacin which might even soothe arthritis pain. The source failed to explain how to apply the cucurbitacin, but summer squash are easy enough to grow and now we won’t look at a crookneck the same way again. Xanthophyll is a name for yellow pigments.
Red vegetables are red because of either anthocyanins, betacyanins, or carotenoids, all known to contribute to a long list of health benefits, and you get them by eating strawberries. Therefore, strawberry fields forever. When foods high in carotenoids such as tomatoes or carrots break down, the chemicals enhance the value of nutrients entering the bloodstream. To repeat: carrots include a compound that increases the nutritional value of other already nutritious vegetables. Therefore, carrot fields forever.
The quandary in only sixty days will be which tomato seedlings fit the space allotted, and a gardener can choose to spice up the color selection. It’s possible in September you could be harvesting baskets of white, pink. orange, red, purple, black or multi-colored tomatoes if you’re into that sort of thing. Same with peppers, radishes, carrots, and don’t forget aubergines, not to mention different chards and colorful kales plus marigolds and pansies… everywhere a rainbow.