“Lust”, not “buttocks”. I assume this is like calling them “love-apples” in English (poma amoris fructu rubro)
The claim that the cherry tomato was invented in Israel dates back to a p.r. campaign starting about 2003, and a subsequent N.Y. Times article.
While Israeli plant breeders made important advances in hybridization, the truth is that cherry tomatoes were around (and popular) long before they worked with them.
There is a lengthy article in Gastronomica about the controversy (which has developed political overtones), and you can search for and download the PDF.
I can but wild blueberries every year in the supermarket. They look and taste a lot like… Wild blueberries. Domestic strawberries about about 8 times larger than wild ones, but domestic raspberries look a lot like wild ones. I don’t think the cranberry has been selectively bred to speak of, just managed.
I bet that watercress and scallions are similar to their ancestors. Probably chives, too. Onions were probably bred for large bulbs, and garlic for big heads.
Those are some of my guesses.
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Thanks, I’ll look.
Dan
If you are in the Americas, that is escaped-from-cultivation asparagus, not wild. It is native to Asia Minor I believe.
I don’t agree that this nitpick is correct, not even in the tedious “a tomato is a fruit” sense. A fruit is a technical scientific term as well an everyday non-technical word, so it’s at least valid to say that there is a technical sense in which (to a botanist) a tomato is a fruit. Similarly, of course it’s true that mushrooms are fungi rather than plants. But unlike plant or fruit the word vegetable is not a technical scientific term. It doesn’t have any meaning other than the everyday one, a category of stuff that people eat. So there’s no technical basis to dispute everyday usage, there’s no reason to exclude edible fungi from the category of food we call vegetables.
Interesting. Still, despite its point of origin, I did some googling and found nothing to suggest that the cultivated version of asparagus is much different than its wild cousin. Other than white asparagus, which is deprived of sunlight so photosynthesis is prevented.
It seems to me that most berries are pretty similar to their wild progenitors. Whenever I am in Seattle in August I pick loads of wild blackberries which are indistinguishable from the supermarket varieties. And wild blueberries, which grow in profusion in Quebec, are similar to the cultivated. We occasionally see tomatillos in the market and I wonder if they are the wild progenitor of tomatoes. They are small, red and partly wrapped in a petal (or maybe a sepal).
They’re both members of the nightshade family, but tomatillos are Physalis philadelphica and tomatoes are Solanum lycopersicum.
To continue this exercise into pedantry, I found a reference stating the tomato is thought to be derived from the progenitor species S. pimpinellifolium and S. cerasiforme.
For that matter, the mushroom is the fruiting body of the fungus. I suppose it’s not the ovary that produces seeds, but… close enough. Both in culinary and botanical terms, I think it’s fine to include mushrooms among “fruits and veggies”.
Similar to what I used to buy. Identical to the tubs of “wild blueberries” I buy in season. But not that similar to the dime-sized crisp berries I often find for sale around now. Although the flavor is similar. 
Really? I can only assume that in the US you have much better supermarket varieties. Here in the UK commercial blackberries are one of the most disappointing “versions” of the wild fruit, lacking in… pretty much everything, really. No sharpness, little flavour, bland… in a blind tasting I don’t think I would be able to identify them. There’s not enough to go on.
j
I don’t know if I’d be able to distinguish supermarket blackberries from the wild ones in my yard by flavor alone. The store-bought ones tend to be considerably larger; the named variety I grow has fruit about twice the size of the wild type.
It’s surprising to me to hear that. I don’t doubt you for a second, but my experience is very different. I would have said that blackberries are one of the worst examples of store fruits being produced for size, appearance and little else. I have to conclude that US producers do a much better job on flavor than UK ones. (Or that you have really rubbish wild fruit - but that doesn’t sound likely. 
)
j
Maybe blackberries grown in Mexico and Guatemala lose more of their flavor on the long trip to the U.K. as compared to the shorter distance to the U.S.
There is a very strange twisted story behind those ubiquitous blackberries in Seattle. It involves an eccentric California man who believes in Eugenics, the Himalayas and a guy from India.
Anyways - this this eccentric guy is also responsible for the Russet potato, freestone peach and elephant garlic.
I’ve always wondered who was the first to consider that mushrooms, truffles, and other funguses were edible at all. Somebody must have been awful desperately hungry. Same with snails and other mollusks. (Note: I’m not knocking mushrooms. I like them. But I would never have been the first to think of eating them.)
i see squirrels and rabbits eating them all the time. I suspect we’ve always eaten them, since before we were people.
I remember reading years ago that rocket was found growing on the slopes of Vesuvius, within the last few decades, by a guy who read about it in Roman texts and determined to find it. So it was re-introduced into western food quite recently, in presumably its now-wild form.
How true that story - and my memory. - is I am not sure!
Turnips, mustard greens and kale are strong contenders, being some of the earliest forms of the Brassica family. Which went nuts and we ended up with broccoli and cauliflower and canola oil and Brussels sprouts and kohlrabi and bok choy and cabbage and and and… Brassicas kinda feed the world.