Seedless seeds and other curiosities

So, exactly what do you plant to get a seedless watermelon?

A seedless watermelon seed?

I guess…

Somehow a seedless seed seems sorta silly...

For that matter, how do they get the seeds for next season’s seedless watermelon? Mr. Darwin’s theory teaches that the whole reason for a watermelon is to make more watermelon seeds. And if the melon has no seeds…?

It would appear to be an insoluble horticultural conundrum that someone has conveniently solved.

Hence the apparent existence of both seedless melons and seedless melon seeds.

All of which begs the question…why?

There’s no denying the popularity of the seedless variety. Go to the grocer’s and odds are watermelons sans seed are the only melons in stock. Still, my appetite for watermelon significantly predates the prevalence of intentionally seed-free hydro-fruit. In fact, Mom seriously held that the more the seeds, the sweeter the melon. Had she cracked open a seedless melon while Ike was in the White House, she likely would have fed it directly to the pigs and fired off a bitter complaint to Bud the grocer for stocking swine-grade produce.

And I don’t know that seeds in anyway diminished our enjoyment even one little bit. In fact seed spitting was part of the attraction … especially when little brother was well in range with his back turned. Seeds were just part of the total watermelon experience – one of those things that set summer apart from all the other seasons.

Y’see, when I was a kid, watermelon fell into a category pretty much only shared with cotton candy, snow cones, icicles and fruits and berries purloined from the neighbor’s orchard and berry patch – watermelon was one of those things that was pretty much always eaten outside.  That’s because, watermelon, particularly when exuberantly enjoyed by small boys, is not a neat thing. Cut into big, thick half-moon slices, we’d attack with enthusiasm, sorting out seeds with our tongues then letting fly with soggy machine gun bursts in the direction of an unsuspecting co-eater. By the time we reached white rind all around we looked like so many street urchins sporting green, pink and white wild boars’ tusks extending well past our ears. Shirtless on a hot, sunny day watermelon juice would dribble from chin to chest, smear across cheeks and find its way into ears and navel until bloated, seed plastered and happy we’d de-sticky in the blast of the garden hose or leap half clothed into the lake.

Back then, watermelon wasn’t something you could eat just any old day.

Skip ahead to the transparent plastic clamshells lined up in the grocer’s produce case. Packed with neatly hewn chunks of seedless melon, proportioned with cantaloupe and seedless grapes watermelon has shed its wild reputation for a domesticated acceptability – part of a tidy fruit snack, suitable for taking to work, eating at your desk – no firehose or conveniently located lake required. It’s lost more than just its seeds … it’s one more thing run through the de-fun-itizer and we are poorer for it.

So here we are, raising a whole generation with no clue as to how to deal with a mouthful of watermelon seeds. Like the kids padded and helmeted ala  Roundtable Knights in order to scoot around the block on a training-wheeled sidewalk bike, a small risk has been removed from their lives. They won’t be choking on an errant seed, nor will they find the back of their heads seed plastered by an antisocial sibling.

In an age when a skinned knee merits a trip to urgent care and a playground spat a session with a PhD counselor, these are significant positives for some folks.

But I’m happy I came around when snow was for making snowballs, as well as snow angels. I learned bees may sting, but they also make honey, and the sweetest melons have the most seeds.