Watermelons

Watermelons, botanically known as Citrullus lanatus belongs to the family Cucurbitaceae. They thought he was born in South Africa, especially Kalahari desert, where most acient varieties (as Tsamma melon) is still present today.

Flowering plants that produce fruit watermelon botanical “pepo”, which is typical of the hard crust and the meat paste: from fruit results below ovary is characteristic of the Cucurbitaceae.

Watermelons are made primarily of water (more than 90%), and is probably the cause of your name, where they have been used as an easily portable source of water for centuries in ancient history, Asian culture and some legends tell about watermelons.

Today there are hundreds of different varieties, mainly due to the different needs of regional markets: the genetic engineering has allowed the construction of giant watermelons (the largest weighed about 262 pounds) and a wide range of seeds (due to cross each other in a tetraploid diploid plants of the variety, resulting in triploids of plants with a smaller than normal seed watermelons).

But the seeds are not annoying: in some countries of Asia, especially China, roasted seeds, are very common and eaten as a snack! Other regions of the African press, made from oil seeds of watermelon, which is common in soups, as egusi. Although the skin is often pickled or stir-friend, which means that the whole fruit, watermelon is edible.