[jhsay]

Pardon my ignorance. Is KIWI fruit native to NZ?

[jesselyn]

yes jinkee :yes

[evelien]

See this text, found on www.kiwi.bird.freeservers.com

The "kiwi" is not to be confused with "kiwifruit" - the brown furry fruit with the green flesh. Kiwifruit (Actinidia Chinesis) is a native of the Yangtse Valley in south central China where it is known as Yang Tao, or "monkey peach". The fruit was originally called a "Chinese gooseberry" in English. Sometime in the 1960s, kiwifruit farmers in New Zealand decided to market the fruit around the world, but decided to give it another name. "Chinese gooseberries" sounded sour, and were associated with the then-dreaded "Red China" plus the name was just not "sexy"! To help identify the fruit with New Zealand, the much cuter name "kiwifruit" was chosen.
:hopeso

[pleccy2000]

A kiwi is not just a fruit
http://members.lycos.co.uk/pleccy/banfruit.jpg

[jesselyn]

:eek kiwifruit not originally from NZ :eek sorry - my bad :oops:

[Diny]

In fear of making myself sound abit of a pratt here, but I'm sure there's been some bickering going on between the Chinese and the New Zealanders regarding the good old Kiwi Fruit.

I understand that the name Kiwi Fruit was never actually registered in NZ. Recently the astute Chinese growers decided to register the name Kiwi Fruit for the ones produced in China. So - the ones produced in NZ can no longer (legally) be called Kiwi Fruit. I understand they now go by the name of Zespre.

No doubt the exact details will differ slightly from what I've written above, but I'm sure you'll find the 'guts' of the story is correct.

Abit like the opportunist Aussie - Ugg boots have been to the Kiwi's what tea and scones have been to the English for just about as long as anybody can remember. But again, the actual name was never registered. A couple of years ago an Aussie manufacturer of the said sheepskin boots decided to register the name for himself ....... abit of a dirty trick but I can't help finding it amusing :oops:

OK - any more useless info required?

Diny

[Carol]

Diny - you should go on "Who wants to be a millionaire"!
:laugh :laugh :laugh

[Diny]

Hey Carol I'd love to, I'm an expert in the safety of my arm chair ...... in front of cameras I would make a complete and utter fool of myself - believe me.

Diny

[kiwidebs]

Yeah, but think of all those dollars the pounds would become - if only you could answer all 15 questions. :eek :laugh :clap
Debs

[jhsay]

Hi Evelien,
I was only expexting a "yes" or "no" answer about the kiwifruit. I didn't realize that there's a story behind it. Thanks for the info.
-jinkee

[wil]

you're welcome :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

[Stu]

The original chinese gooseberries from china are only small little critters, only the sixe of say acorns. They were imported to NZ in the 19th century and cultivated for home gardens etc into much larger varieties. It turns out that some cuttingsfrom one particularly good vine from our old home farm, Tangotahi, formed an important link in developing even better strains in the 70s... the boffins came over and took bulk cuttings of our vine (long since passed away) to breed up and use in developing the breed here.

No-one in NZ dreamed of actually selling Chinese Gooseberries when I was a kid... they were semi wild on farms and over back fences in town gardens everywhere. When they thunk up the name "Kiwifruit" we damn near fell off our chair laughing.

The main centre for the development of commercial kiwifruit was Te Puke (pron Tea Pookie as is "bookie", not Tea Puke, as in "unfortunate case of poisoned Earl Grey") but it is now all over the place, basically anywhere pretty much frost-free.

Every year there are huge truck and trailer units of "second" grade kiwifruit hauled around the countryside to be dumped as cattle feed, helluva waste really.

Didn't know that about the name being stolen by the chinese (bloody asians eh! :-) hehehehehe, oops!), we were told it was because kiwifruit was now such an international name, everyone from chile to israel uses it, that they wanted to rename our product Zespri to raise it's profile internationally. I can believe the thing about name registration though, sounds about right.

cheers,
Stu.

[Diny]

Stu Mate,

Have you ever thought about writing a book? :nice1

Good informative posting there.

Diny