Week 36: Watermelon (Sylvia Plath, Pliny the Elder)

Fig. 1. “[Man Cutting Watermelon]” (c. 1898-1903). Johnson Photography Studio. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

New Moon; 12 Days to Fall Equinox

This week's post is dedicated to my dad, who always has a watermelon-in-progress in his fridge, covered with an elastic shower cap.

Headnote#

Let’s be honest: this whole three-part series on the cucurbits family was aimed, all along, at that pinnacle summer experience, ye olde watermelon (Citrullus lanatus). Stepping back to view the family as a whole, we see a global story: whereas the Cucurbita genus originated in the Americas, and Cucumis in Asia (via Australia), Citrullus is a powerfully hydrating, botanically confusing gift from Africa. At first glance, “watermelon” is a wonderfully literal name compared to those evocatively figurative fruits, such as “honeydew” or “custard apple.” Indeed, the watermelon has such a high water content that it used to be carried on journeys like “a kind of nature-made canteen.” But that literalness conceals an apparent contradiction: wild and ancestral watermelons are xerophytic (“dry” + “plant”), requiring little water to grow. These sprawling annual vines first emerged in desert climates, from the Kordofan melons that grow in Sudan, and their deep taproots and durable leaves allow them to survive on almost nothing.

How melons do this is a small marvel to consider. A melon operates as a thermal buffer, maintaining internal temperatures significantly below the ambient air through a combination of structural insulation and cellular physics. Drawing moisture from the deep, cool soil, the vine drives cooling groundwater into the expanding “pepo”—the botanical term for this specialized berry—where it is held in a mesh of thin-walled cells. This massive internal volume, containing approximately 92% water, requires a large amount of thermal energy to change its temperature; in other words, it stays cool long into the heat of the day. Furthermore, the dense rind acts as a barrier against rising temperatures, while the plant's own leaf canopy shades it from the sun. These neat tricks allow the watermelon to function as a living thermal heatsink, resisting the peak fluctuations of the summer atmosphere to preserve a stable, cool environment for its developing seeds. No wonder the fruit was buried with pharaohs and painted on the walls of their tombs.

Obviously, watermelon is a pretty old fruit. Its intersection with human history falls roughly in a second generation between the oldest cultivated fruits—grapes, avocados, and especially figs—and modern newcomers such as strawberries, grapefruit, and kiwis. But the watermelon and its wild relatives were eaten first for their nutritious seeds, which have been recovered from 6,000-year-old archaeological sites in Libya. And while the flesh of those wild relatives is mostly bitter and often toxic, all parts of the watermelon’s fruit are now edible thanks to a genetic mutation that stopped its production of bitter cucurbitacins, while leaving them intact, as pest deterrents, in the rest of the plant. In addition to its succulent pulp and pickle-able rinds, which include many beneficial substances and properties, the historically significant seeds are again gaining culinary interest, especially in powder or flour form.

Botanically, the watermelon is considered a true pepo (a large berry with a hard rind and many seeds in a central pocket), not to be confused with soft-skinned true berries such as papaya and passionfruit. Unlike some thick-skinned pepos (think: pumpkin), you can eat it raw. In addition to the Kordofan melon from which it emerged, the watermelon shares a genus with six other species, with which it sometimes has been confused. The egusi melon (Citrullus mucosospermus), recently confirmed by molecular botanists as its own species, is now being studied for biotechnological applications, and its seeds (alongside those of the white-seed melon, Cucumeropsis mannii) remain an important part of West African cuisine. There are other sources of confusion, too: it was only in the past twenty years that scientists robustly distinguished the sweet red watermelon from several similar-looking relatives, including the toxic colocynth and the oldest member of Citrullus: the alien-looking and deceptively named Gemsbok cucumber.

The sweetness, the sustenance, the confusion, the weirdos—I guess the cucurbits are just another typical family, after all.

Fig. 2. “Images of watermelon drawn from approx. 1385 to 1395.” Harry S. Paris, et al. “Medieval iconography of watermelons in Mediterranean Europe.” Annals of Botany 112.5 (2013): 867-79.

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Readings#

1. In Benidorm there are melons,
   Whole donkey-carts full
   
   Of innumerable melons,
   Ovals and balls,
   
   Bright green and thumpable
   Laced over with stripes
   
   Of turtle-dark green.
   Choose an egg-shape, a world-shape,
   
   Bowl one homeward to taste
   In the whitehot noon: […]

Sylvia Plath. From “Fiesta Melons.” 1956. The Collected Poems. London, England: Faber & Faber, 1981. 46-47.#

2. The fruit known as pepones are a cool and refreshing diet, and are slightly relaxing to the stomach. Applications are used of the pulpy flesh in defluxions or pains of the eyes. The root, too, of this plant cures the hard ulcers known to us as "ceria," from their resemblance to a honeycomb, and it acts as an emetic. Dried and reduced to a powder, it is given in doses of four oboli in hydromel, the patient, immediately after taking it, being made to walk half a mile. This powder is employed also in cosmetics for smoothing the skin. The rind, too, has the effect of promoting vomiting, and, when applied to the face, of clearing the skin; a result which is equally produced by an external application of the leaves of all the cultivated cucumbers. These leaves, mixed with honey, are employed for the cure of the pustules known as "epinyctis;" steeped in wine, they are good, too, for the bites of dogs and of multipedes, insects known to the Greeks by the name of "seps," of an elongated form, with hairy legs, and noxious to cattle more particularly; the sting being followed by swelling, and the wound rapidly putrifying.

Pliny the Elder. Naturalis Historia [The Natural History], Book XX: Remedies Derived from the Garden Plants. Circa 77 CE. Trans. John Bostock. London, England: Taylor and Francis, 1855.#

Supplementum#

• Allison Meier. “The Evolution of the Watermelon Captured in Still Lifes.” Hyperallergic (July 30, 2015).

• Ellen Ficklen. Watermelon Times (2026).

• Abbey Perrault. “Here’s What the Watermelon Was Up to Before It Tasted Good.” Gastro Obscura (September 17, 2018).

• Bridget Alix. “Why Prehistoric Herders Didn’t Spit Out Their Watermelon Seeds.” Smithsonian Magazine (November 3, 2022).

• Girinandini Singh. “Cyril Lancelin on his immersive sculpture ‘Mix’ at IOMA Art Center, Beijing.” stir world (August 20, 2021).

Fig. 3. “Rose Coghlan as "The Watermelon," from the series Fancy Dress Ball Costumes (N73) for Duke brand cigarettes” (1889). The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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✦ From the Earthly Book of Hours ✦#

• I fixed a small bug with the time/clock display while I consider next steps for this project.

• This week’s highlight, from the hours of morning movement and ascent, pairs one of Johannes Vermeer’s famous domestic maps with an ode by the often-overlooked Boston-Harlem poet, Helene Johnson.