Old Fruit Pictures

June 24, 2019 12:06 PM

Over 100 Years Ago, the US Government Commissioned 7,500 Watercolor Paintings of Every Kind of Fruit in the Country "The Pomological Watercolor Collection comprises over 7,500 paintings, drawings, and wax models commissioned by the USDA between 1886 and 1942....About 65 American artists contributed to the collection, tasked by the USDA to document the thousands and thousands of varieties of heirloom and experimental fruit cultivars sprouting up nationwide."
posted by apricot (27 comments total)

Looks like the entire collection - at quite respectable resolution - is up on Wikimedia: USDA Pomological Watercolors

So, if someone thought it would be a grape idea to, say, wallpaper a room with pomological pictures, they could have a berry good time. Probably an appealing idea for someone.
posted by Making You Bored For Science at 12:16 PM on June 24, 2019 [12 favorites]

Eponysfruitical.
posted by Fizz at 12:18 PM on June 24, 2019 [10 favorites]

Thank you! I should have searched for that.

It's searchable here too.

Eponysterical?
posted by apricot at 12:19 PM on June 24, 2019

epomosterical.
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:26 PM on June 24, 2019 [6 favorites]

It delights me that this is almost a double post. Never too many fruits.
posted by phunniemee at 12:33 PM on June 24, 2019 [2 favorites]

I keep thinking that it would be fun to print a bunch of these, but we don't have any wall space, even though they're gorgeous watercolors.
posted by Making You Bored For Science at 12:33 PM on June 24, 2019

Bored for Science, that sounds exactly what tattoos were made for!
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 12:56 PM on June 24, 2019 [1 favorite]

how you like them apples
posted by gwint at 1:04 PM on June 24, 2019 [5 favorites]

srsly tho thats a crazy amount of apples
posted by gwint at 1:07 PM on June 24, 2019 [1 favorite]

Thank you for answering a question I had entirely forgotten I had: Why were so many depictions of fruit done in this one particular style and where it came from. Seriously, it's something I wondered about as a child, yet never remembered to get an answer once the Internet came along.
posted by wierdo at 1:48 PM on June 24, 2019 [3 favorites]

All of that fruit looks so ripe. I was in the supermarket this weekend, looking at row after row of depressingly picked-green-and-still-green fruit, miserly flavour, the plant telling you by dull and bitter taste that it's not ready for you to eat this fruit yet. These pictures are making me hungry for ripe fruit.
posted by clawsoon at 2:07 PM on June 24, 2019 [5 favorites]

The thing about apples is that they don't breed true. It doesn't matter if you're careful to save seeds from a variety you like; you'll end up with a completely different apple if you plant them. An apple variety has to be kept continuously alive with cuttings. Once the last cutting dies, that apple variety is gone forever.
posted by clawsoon at 2:12 PM on June 24, 2019 [3 favorites]

Once the last cutting dies, that apple variety is gone forever.

oh shit really?

plz back the kickstarter for my new indie game, Red Delicious Redemption, in which a dark, brooding loner is hired by a mysterious syndicate to eradicate the world's least favorite apple variety with the help of his spunky, wisecracking sidekick, "Granny" Smith

pears will be available as DLC if I exceed my funding goals
posted by prize bull octorok at 2:18 PM on June 24, 2019 [31 favorites]

Given my wonky eyesight, I read that as “pornological” watercolor collection. Maybe 4000 paintings of apples still qualifies under that heading.
posted by njohnson23 at 2:23 PM on June 24, 2019 [5 favorites]

This is one of my favorite twitter follows; it's a delight every time one of the images pops up amid the rest of the madness on my feed. Another similarly diverting bot with a lot of pleasant botanical imagery is the (French) Republican Calendar.
posted by karayel at 2:58 PM on June 24, 2019 [1 favorite]

If you ever visit the National Agriculture Library in Beltsville, MD, you can see some of these in person!
posted by acrasis at 3:06 PM on June 24, 2019 [3 favorites]

I've seen some of these in person; they're absolutely beautiful.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 3:25 PM on June 24, 2019

Anyone know what the 8 cards at the top of the article are depicting? I can't make out the text, but I'm guessing (some kind of) tangerine, apple, pecan (??), fig, roselle (?), some Annona I've never tried but would eat the hell out of, orange, and... uh... some nut.
posted by aws17576 at 3:50 PM on June 24, 2019 [1 favorite]

You'd think they'd run out of ideas for 7500 different watercolors of each type of fruit.
posted by bleep at 5:23 PM on June 24, 2019

It doesn't matter if you're careful to save seeds from a variety you like; you'll end up with a completely different apple if you plant them.

What kind of better society would we be if we just accepted this and appreciated the changing apples with each season. *looks up at clouds*
posted by bleep at 5:26 PM on June 24, 2019 [2 favorites]

No blackcurrants then.
posted by unliteral at 6:13 PM on June 24, 2019

"Mr. President, we must not allow a watercolor fruit gap!"
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 6:31 PM on June 24, 2019

oh shit really?

What kind of better society would we be if we just accepted this and appreciated the changing apples with each season.

Yeah...it's crazy...apple genetics are weird. They don't breed true and the vast majority of seeds produce small hard useless crabapples. All commercial apples are produced from graftings onto the roots of other apples. There was a piece on NPR a few years back about a group of botanists traveling the country looking for abandoned farms falling into ruin because there was often an apple tree by the back door. Many are unique and the last of their kind...I think there were some they were able to identify from records like these and old farm catalogs. I forget if they found the new "cosmic crisp" (which I still haven't seen yet) this way or if it's actually a new hybrid.
posted by sexyrobot at 8:46 PM on June 24, 2019 [5 favorites]

This is my jam.
posted by q*ben at 10:43 PM on June 24, 2019 [4 favorites]

Ooh, these would look great hung in the kitchen. I also like the handwritten notes on them. It's supposed to be utilitarian, but it's a delight to look at compared to my 21st century engineer scribbles.
posted by Harald74 at 1:00 AM on June 25, 2019

I want a big, glossy, coffee-table book of these!

There are some fantastic images of blemished or diseased or rotting fruit if you sort through for the bad apples.
posted by carrioncomfort at 8:18 AM on June 25, 2019 [1 favorite]

small hard useless crabapples

cider is a use
posted by ragtag at 10:57 AM on June 25, 2019