By their fruits ye shall know them

As we're currently enjoying the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, it seems appropriate to take a look this month at some of the words which have been invented or borrowed by growers and retailers to describe some of the new varieties of fruit and vegetables which will soon be available at a supermarket near you.

Many of these words, like the products themselves, are blends - that is, they are made up of elements of existing words, while others (such as paraguayo below) are borrowings from foreign languages. When it comes to blends, we're already familiar with the Jonagold apple (from the existing apple varieties Jonathan and Golden Delicious) and the tangelo, a citrus fruit that's a hybrid of a tangerine and a grapefruit (from tangerine and pomelo). A vegetable that's been around for about a decade is the broccoflower, which is a hybrid of broccoli and cauliflower that looks like a pale green cauliflower and tastes like broccoli, while the more recent strawmato is an extra-sweet, strawberry-shaped tomato.

As growers are not as green as they're cabbage-looking when it comes to tempting the consumer's jaded palate, it can only be a matter of time before we're tucking into carrocado or even spinette (work them out!). Here's a few more that we've noticed:

kiwiberry: a small variety of hairless kiwi fruit; it seems to have been deemed that the hairy skin of the original was a turn-off for some, while the smaller size makes the fruit easier to pop into your mouth.

broccolini: a cross between broccoli and curly kale (formed from broccoli plus the Italian suffix -ini, meaning 'little'). The Californian growers have also named this asparation [sic], but as cnn.com remarks, 'If the names asparation and broccolini don't catch on, there's yet another name, used mostly by Europeans. They simply call it 'tender stem' and enjoy its slightly sweet, slightly peppery flavor.'

paraguayo: a type of flattened freestone peach, also called the doughnut peach (paraguayo is a Spanish word that means 'relating to Paraguay')

karat: a fat orange banana that is rich in Vitamin A (a pun on 'carrot')

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