The NYT reports that most cultures use the same categories to classify plants, such as trees, vines, herbs, bushes. People also consistently use two-word combinations for specific organisms within a larger group. At least that is what Cecil Brown found after studying 188 languages. It would be interesting to compare the kinds of labels used for crops and crop varieties across cultures. Has anyone done that?
The article also says that we are “losing the ability to order and name and therefore losing a connection to and a place in the living world.” The other day, Jacob commented on “Los tomates ya no saben a nada” by saying that he has “had more and less tasty Spanish tomatoes this summer. The thing is that you can’t “see” taste when you buy (the variety is not indicated)” ((There are of course many tomatoes that look very unlike the next one, but perhaps these haven’t made it to the Spanish retailers yet; or the difference he tasted had little to do with varieties)).
Should we try to get more variety names in shops, markets, restaurants? The slow/organic/local food movement puts a lot of emphasis on where things are grown, but less on what is grown. Also think Starbucks & co.: coffee from Sumatra, Ethiopia, Antigua; but what variety? And why always arabica? Can’t they serve a nice barako? ((You can get a good barako coffee or ice cream in Cafeño in San Juan, Batangas, Phillipines. And on the way back to Manila have a pako salad at Kusina Salud.))
Lidl in Segovia has Dutch (!) “long life” tomatoes. Well, at least that gives some indication about the variety…
And yes, more variety names would make shopping more fun, I think.
Many years ago I tried to do a review of local crop variety names, found maybe about 20 or so papers, covering quite a range of crops and languages, which gave explanations, or at least translations, of such names. The categories of names that seemed to be most common are the ones you’d expect, things like places (e.g. the place of origin), people (e.g. the name of the person who had introduced the variety), distinguishing morphological, agronomic or nutritional characteristics, uses and modes of preparation. But I couldn’t see any particular patterns that would have made a worthwhile paper and eventually, lazily, gave up.
Edwin Nuijten and Conny Almekinders wrote a nice paper, explaining some of the patterns in rice variety naming in The Gambia, comparing it with other cases.
More of this kind of work is needed, I think, because it sheds some light on the genesis of biodiversity and its classification.