It Hass to be avocado
QUESTION
Who or what is the Hass avocado named after?
THE Hass avocado is a cultivar of the avocado (Persea americana) with bumpy skin.
Avocados are native to Central America and Mexico, where they have been cultivated since around 500 BC. The name comes from the Aztec word ahuacatl, which also meant testicle.
It is a matter of scholarly debate as to which was the original definition. Most believe it started out as an euphemism because of the shape of the fruit and the fact they grow in pairs.
In 1926, after California postal worker Rudolph Hass read a magazine article illustrated with an avocado tree on which dollar bills were hanging, he invested all his money in an 1.5-acre plot and bought avocado seeds from the AR Rideout commercial nursery, from which he grew his own seedlings. He grafted on the Fuerte variety, a popular, frost-resistant hybrid between Mexican and Guatemalan types.
One stubborn seedling, grown from a Guatemalan seed of unknown parentage, wouldn’t accept a graft. It grew more rapidly and produced more fruit than the grafts.
It also grew straight up, not spread out like the Fuerte trees, making it possible to grow more trees per acre. Its fruit was creamy with a rich taste.
Hass began selling his avocados by the roadside and they were soon in demand at many of the best restaurants.
In 1935, he patented the Hass avocado. He described it as a ‘new and improved variety’, having excellent shipping qualities with leathery skin, a purple colour and rich, cream-coloured flesh ‘of butter consistency with no fibre and with excellent nutty flavour’.
The Hass avocado mother tree survived until 2002. There are five million Hass avocado trees in California and an estimated ten million worldwide.
According to the Hass Avocado Board, sales top an eye-watering $1billion annually in the US.
However, the Hass family never made a great deal of money from the fruit. Little could be done to enforce the patent.
Other growers simply grafted a Hass variety onto other avocado trees. Rudolf Hass’s royalties from his avocado were less than $5,000 by the time of his death in 1952.
Edward Ralph, Lyme Regis, Dorset.
QUESTION
Is there a medical term to describe an ice cream headache? What are the obscure medical terms for everyday phenomena?
ICE cream headache, otherwise known as brain freeze, is technically known as cold neuralgia or sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia. It’s thought when you eat or drink a substantial quantity of very cold food or liquid, the temperature of the palate (the roof of your mouth) drops substantially. The blood vessels automatically constrict as a survival reflex to maintain the body’s core temperature.
Immediately afterwards, the blood vessels rapidly dilate, and this sends a pain signal to the brain through the trigeminal nerve, the complex system responsible for sensation in the face, the upper branch of which extends into the forehead where the pain is felt most acutely.
Many common sensations have a scientific name.
A sneeze is a bodily reflex technically known as sternutation. The rhythmic diaphragm action of the hiccup is synchronous diaphragmatic flutter.
The numb feeling you get when you’ve slept on your arm is obdormition, which comes from the Latin obdormire, to fall asleep. The pins and needles that follow are called paresthesia.
An involuntary muscle twitch is a fasciculation, from the Latin word fasciculus, which means little bundle. A small swelling of a number of taste buds, which can feel substantial in the mouth, is transient lingual papillitis. The term Morsicatio buccarum describes the act of catching that irritating flap of tissue formed when you’ve bitten your cheek. The dizzy rush of blood to the head brought on by standing up too fast is called orthostatic hypotension, and the runny nose caused by eating spicy food is gustatory rhinitis.
Ms L. Swann, London E12.
QUESTION
Is it true Stonehenge isn’t a henge?
THERE is a precise definition of a henge, which Stonehenge actually fails to meet.
The key distinction is that a henge has a circular bank, or dyke, on the outside of the ring with a ditch on the inside.
This arrangement is reversed at Stonehenge, leading to its classification as a proto-henge.
This is ironic as the term henge derives from Stonehenge.
The term is thought to be of Old English origin, meaning hanging or suspended stones.
This refers to Stonehenge’s arrangement of standing stones supporting a lintel. So, any henge that doesn’t feature that arrangement – such as Wiltshire’s other famous stones, at Avebury – is not a henge, though it does have the correct arrangement of banks and ditches. Each pair of standing stones plus lintel is called a trilithon (tri means three and lith means stone).
Most henges were built in the Neolithic era from 3,000 to 2,000 BC. The majority have a causeway that provides access through the bank and ditch to the flat central area.
They are between 20 m and 100 m in diameter. Not all are circular as some are oval shaped.
While most henges were built of stone, some were wooden, such as Seahenge, uncovered in 1998 at Holme Beach, Norfolk.
Few wooden henges survive, but evidence of them can be found in the post holes where the upright timbers once stood and in their arrangement of banks and ditches. The precise purpose of henges isn’t known, but the general agreement is that they were used for ceremonial purposes, probably religious.
This view is strengthened in the case of Stonehenge because of the precise alignment of the heel stone with the rising sun on Midsummer’s Day, which was a date of considerable religious significance in many ancient religions.
Bob Dillon, Edinburgh.
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