My Town Monday: the Boysenberry

Here in California, we go out of our way to make life easier for the rest of the world. How do we do this? With our cool creative inventions.* Oh, you ask, just what sorts of things have come out of California?

How do these sound?

"Barbie Dolls, blue jeans, the boysenberry, the pill, white zinfandel wine, the square tomato, natural soda, the computer 'mouse', the wetsuit, and theme parks." (from www.pashnittours.com)

This is a photo of Charles Rudolph Boysen (1895-1950). In the 1920s, Mr. Boysen had a farm. Ee-i-ee-i-o. (Sorry. I couldn't resist). Anyway, Mr. Boysen experimented with crossing various types of berries. His hybrid of a blackberry + raspberry + loganberry grew and bore some fruit. Then, Mr. Boysen sold his farm and became Anaheim's park superintendent and chief horticulturist.




Enter George M. Darrow of the USDA and Southern California farmer Walter Knott who were hot on the trail to find the mysterious hybrid berry. They go to Mr. Boysen's abandoned farm and find a few sickly vines. Farmer Knott nurses them back to health and starts selling the berries in 1935 at his roadside fruit stand. They sold like hot cakes (Once again, I couldn't resist) as fresh berries and in preserves and pies. When asked what the popular large berries were, Farmer Knott replied, "Boysenberries. After their originator." Then his wife, Cordelia, took to frying up chicken and sold that at the stand. The Knott's roadside stand became massively popular. To keep everyone happy while they waited in line, Farmer Knott built a ghost town. And this how the theme park, Knotts Berry Farm began.


And guess what berry is featured on the gates to the Knotts Berry Farm theme park?


See the delicious boysenberry. This aggregate fruit is made up of a bunch of drupes, with each drupe composed of many drupelets. (You never know when info like this can come in handy.)


So, if, one day, you happen to find yourself on the Pill and kicking it in a pair of jeans at a Knotts Berry Farm restaurant, noshing on a salad with slices of a square tomato followed by a generous helping of boysenberry pie while sitting across from your daughter who's playing with a Barbie while sipping a natural soda and chatting about computer research with a mouse that convinced her to wear a wetsuit to SeaWorld, you can raise your glass of Zinfandel and shout, "Thank you, California!"

Please pop over to Travis Erwin's blog. He's our Fearless Leader for My Town Mondays. Along with his own MTM, he'll have a list of participants. And while you're on Travis' blog, you might want to scroll down to Friday, January 30's delightful book review. (Oh fine, yes, it's on I So Don't Do Mysteries.)


*Disclaimer: This, of course, refers to the royal "we." I, personally have never come close to inventing anything cool, creative or otherwise.


sources:
http://www.pashnittours.com/funfacts.html
http://science.kosmix.com/topic/Rudolph_Boysen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boysenberry
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Boysenberry