When you bite into an orange or slice a pineapple, you probably never consider the mythological origin of the fruit. Yet cultures around the globe have spun dark, dramatic legends to explain why these tasty treats exist. From severed heads to divine gifts, each story is a reminder that even the most innocent‑looking fruit can have a gruesome backstory.

The Mythological Origin of Everyday Fruit

10 Coconuts And Severed Heads

There are a number of myths about how the coconut came to be, and, like most good myths, they all involve violence. If you look at it the right way, the features of a coconut can take on an eerily human appearance with two eyes and a mouth. So clearly, it grew from a severed head—and the stories that say just that are so numerous, we have to wonder if there’s some truth to it. In New Britain, the severed head came from a boy who had been completely eaten by a shark—save for his head, which was buried and sprouted into the first coconut tree.

An Arapesh myth says that the head belonged to a man who killed a woman for walking ahead of her husband; the man was then, in turn, killed and beheaded by children. A myth from the Admiralty Islands tells of two brothers who steal a canoe from the devil to go fishing. The devil chases them, and they hold him off for a while by throwing the fish they caught into the water; eventually the fish run out, and the younger brother cuts his older brother into pieces, and makes it to shore with just his head left.

In Burma, the donor of the head is a man decapitated by a king who has grown tired of his pranks, and in New Guinea, the head is surrendered voluntarily by a fisherwoman who removes her head to allow fish to swim into her, then cannot find it again.

9 Apples And The Wedding Of Hera

According to Greek mythology, the first apple trees were created by Gaia (also Ge), the Earth, as a wedding present for Hera. The first apples were golden, and the tree was put under the care of three minor goddesses called the Hesperides and a hundred‑headed dragon named Ladon. Fairly well‑known is the story of the 12 labors of Hercules, one of which was to steal the golden apples. He did, of course, killing Ladon in the process.

Perhaps less well‑known is what the golden apples did. Kept in a garden in the West, the golden apples were said to cast their radiant glow across the sky as the Sun traveled below the horizon, creating the beautiful colors of the sunset.

8 Mulberries And Blood

According to the legend of Babylonian lovers Pyramus and Thisbe, mulberries were once white, but turned red when they were stained with blood. The tragic love story starts when the pair were forbidden by their parents to marry. After carrying on their affair through a crack in the wall between their homes, they decide to meet in a field beneath a mulberry tree.

When Thisbe saw a blood‑covered lion drinking from a nearby pond, she dropped her shawl and fled in fright. Her lover, finding the shawl and seeing the bloodied lion, feared the worst, and killed himself. His blood stained the white berries of the mulberry tree, and when Thisbe returned to find him dead, she too took her own life. Before she died, she saw the now‑red berries of the mulberry tree, and said that they will forever be a testament to tragedy and love. From then on, mulberries were reddish‑purple.

7 Elderberries And The Death Of Man

The Tsimshan are a group of Native Americans that lived on the Pacific Coast of Canada. Their myth of the elderberry bush serves to explain why humans live such short lives, and in fact how our life spans were determined. According to legend, the Stone and the Elderberry Bush were arguing over who got to bear children first. The Stone proposed a deal: If she gave birth first, humans would have a long life. But if the Elderberry Bush gave birth first, humans would have a much shorter life.

Both went into labor at the same time, but a wise Giant interfered. He went to the Elderberry Bush, touched her, and told her to bear her children; she, of course, went on to give birth before the Stone. This is why humans only live a short time, and why elderberry bushes are often seen growing on graves and in cemeteries.

6 Breadfruit, Famine, And Testicles

According to Hawaiian folklore, there are a couple different ways that the breadfruit tree was said to come into existence. In one version, a devastating famine seizes the island of Waiakea and takes the life of a man named Ulu. When Ulu dies, priests tell his family they should bury him beside a stream. A tree grows from his grave overnight, and in the morning his family finds it bearing fruit. The fruit, in turn, feeds those he left behind and sees them through the rest of the famine.

An alternate story involves a man who sacrificed himself for his family; after he was dead, a tree grew from his testicles. The gods—all 44,000 of them—tried the fruit and found it wasn’t just edible, it was tasty. Once they found out where the tree had grown from, though, they vomited up the fruit and the seeds, spreading it across the islands.

5 Figs For Hospitality

After her daughter was kidnapped by Hades, Greek goddess Demeter wandered the land looking for her. During her travels, she stayed at the house of a man in Attica, in Southern Greece. He welcomed her into his home and treated her kindly, and she thanked him for his hospitality by giving him the first fig tree.

Fig trees thrived in the fertile lands around Attica and Athens; here, Dionysus also has a strong connection with the fig. His name means “friend of the fig,” and this is not an innocent reference in the least. The fact that the fig’s appearance was similar to that of testicles certainly didn’t go unnoticed by the Greeks, and in fact the words for “figs” and “testicles” were the same. Part of the yearly festival to Dionysus included carving a giant phallus from the wood of a fig tree and carrying it around town.

4 Strawberries And The Gates Of Heaven

Strawberries were originally said to be the fruit associated with the Norse goddess Friga. But things didn’t start to get really weird until the spread of Christianity. And, like all things deemed pagan and heathen, strawberries were soon absorbed into the Christian mythos as the fruits of the Virgin. She was apparently a little jealous when it came to the strawberries—it was said that she required all strawberries be left for her. So strict was this rule that it was also added that anyone who approached Heaven with traces of strawberry juice on them would be denied entrance to paradise for eating this new holy fruit.

As if that wasn’t weird enough, there’s another explanation for this myth. When a baby died, it was said they ascended to heaven disguised from potential darkness as a strawberry. So anyone who ate strawberries might well be eating a baby—clearly, that in itself made it advisable just to stay away from them.

3 Coffee For Evening Prayer

Ethiopian legend credits a boy named Kaldi with the discovery of the coffee berry. Kaldi was a goatherd, and was out watching over his goats one day when he noticed they were eating berries from a tree. After eating the berries, the goats became energized and would refuse to sleep at night. Kaldi took some of the berries to monks at a local monastery.

The monks promptly tried the berries themselves, and suddenly found they had a much easier time staying awake during their evening prayers. The monks shared the knowledge with each other, and soon everyone was partaking in the coffee berries to stay awake in church. From there, coffee spread to the Arabian peninsula, and a single goatherd changed the way we stay awake.

2 Poison And Eternal Life From A Mango

A legend that is told throughout the tropics is the story of how a magpie flew to the heavens and brought a mango seed back to his king. Once the tree bore fruit, the king ordered an old man to eat the first piece of fruit. That single piece of fruit had been poisoned by the venom of a snake that had dripped onto the tree as an eagle carried it overhead, and the old man died.

Horrified, the king killed the magpie. Much later, an old woman vowed to commit suicide after a lifetime of abuse; she ate a mango that wasn’t poisoned, and was given her youth back. The king could never bring himself to eat a mango, however, as he was overcome with guilt about killing the bird who had given him such a gift.

1 Pineapples, Laziness, And Conceit

The story of how the pineapple came to be is a folk tale about a beautiful‑but‑lazy little girl named Pina. According to legend, the little girl was so selfish that any time anyone asked to borrow any of her things, she would say she couldn’t find them. If anyone asked her to do any work around the house, she would say she couldn’t find the cooking utensils or the cleaning supplies. When her parents and her sisters became extremely ill, she shouted at them and harassed them until they prepared her breakfast and went to work in the fields, accusing them of being lazy and useless.

When her ill mother asked Pina to boil some rice for her, she went through her usual routine of saying she couldn’t find anything. Her mother lamented that if she had a hundred eyes, she might actually be able to find things. Outraged, the girl dragged a sack of rice—the product of her father’s hard work in the fields—outside, cut it open, and realized she was no longer able to move. Pina disappeared, and was never found again. Her mother, months after recovering from her illness, was in the garden when she found an odd‑looking fruit. Peeling the skin, she saw it had a hundred eyes, and realized her wish had come true.

Comedy superstars Monty Python’s famous 1969 sketch shone a spotlight on the surprisingly lethal side of fresh fruit. While their self‑defence lesson centred on the banana as a weapon, the reality is that fruit can be a deadly foe – whether through choking, poisoning, slipping, or a crushing fall. Below we count down the top 10 fatal fruit attacks that have claimed lives.

Top 10 Fatal Fruit Threats Explained

10 Grapes of Wrath

Round, luscious and tempting? Their tiny size can be misleading – grapes are a surprisingly common cause of fatal choking. In 2017 a five‑year‑old boy died at an after‑school club when a grape lodged in his airway. Paramedics tried to extract it with forceps, but it was too late. From 1999‑2013 in the United States, 2,103 childhood deaths were recorded from foreign‑body airway obstructions, with grapes ranking third after hot dogs and boiled sweets.

The British Medical Journal explains why grapes are especially hazardous for young children who may not chew thoroughly. Soft, smooth objects are harder to dislodge with the Heimlich maneuver, often staying wedged because of their spherical shape. Pre‑slicing grapes can reduce risk, yet it isn’t a guarantee. Even in antiquity, around 405 BC, the Greek playwright Sophocles reportedly choked on a grape seed in his wine.

9 An Apple A Day…

…keeps the doctor away, the old saying claims; yet a healthy bite can become catastrophic. In May 2016 a 22‑month‑old toddler in New Zealand was left permanently paralyzed after choking on an apple slice, which triggered cardiac arrest and severe motor disability. A near‑miss that underscores the danger.

Beyond choking, apple seeds hold a hidden peril. They contain amygdalin, which converts to hydrogen cyanide when crushed. Lethal doses for adults range from 50‑300 mg. One apple seed carries about 0.6 mg of cyanide, meaning you’d need to ingest roughly 83‑500 seeds for acute poisoning. So a single Golden Delicious won’t kill you, but massive consumption could be hazardous.

8 Going Bananas

Contrary to popular myth, eating six or seven bananas won’t kill you from potassium overload. Scientists estimate a lethal dose would require over 400 bananas a day – before that, nausea would likely force you to stop. Bananas also emit low‑level radiation, but you’d need to consume 274 a day for seven years to feel any acute effect.

The most dangerous aspect is the peel. A classic slap‑stick prop, the banana skin has caused real fatalities. In July 1920 a young boy in Newark, New Jersey slipped on a banana peel and was run over by a truck. In 2013 a man slipped on a peel and was struck by a Staten Island subway train. While 99 % of exported bananas are the Cavendish variety, they’re vulnerable to a devastating disease that could one day eradicate them.

7 Not Very A‑Peeling

If slipping on a fruit peel sounds absurd, even seasoned stunt‑people aren’t immune. In 1911 English showman Bobby Leach survived a Niagara Falls barrel plunge, only to meet his end fifteen years later after slipping on an orange peel. The fall broke his leg, which became infected; lacking antibiotics, he died during surgery.

Whole Foods tried to mitigate this risk in 2016 by selling pre‑peeled oranges in plastic packaging. Though the product faced environmental backlash and was pulled, the intention may have been to protect shoppers from the perilous peel.

6 Presidential Peril

Fruit isn’t limited to daredevils. In 1850 the 12th U.S. President, Zachary Taylor, died after a brush with cherries. Celebrating on the grounds that would become the Washington Monument, he fell ill and died five days later at age 65, after surviving the Mexican‑American War.

Doctors attributed his death to “cholera mobius,” a bacterial infection common in the era’s poor sanitation, present in both the water he drank and the water used to wash fruit. Contemporary rumors blamed a massive serving of cherries and milk for his stomach cramps, but the real cause was water‑borne bacteria.

5 Melancholy Melon

Bacterial infections aren’t limited to meat or dairy; fruit can be a vector too. In 2011 the CDC reported fifteen deaths and 72 illnesses linked to contaminated cantaloupe, marking the deadliest U.S. food‑borne outbreak since 1998.

In 2018 four people in New South Wales died from listeria traced to contaminated rockmelons, prompting supermarkets to pull the fruit. Pregnant women face a tenfold higher risk of listeria, so expectant mothers might consider avoiding melons altogether.

4 Lethal Lychees

Even non‑toxic fruit can become lethal. Research published in The Lancet in 2017 linked unripe lychees to over 100 child deaths annually in northern India. The fruit’s outer shell hides hypoglycin, a toxin that triggers dangerously low blood sugar, causing brain dysfunction, loss of consciousness, and death.

Undernourished children are especially vulnerable; half of the patients admitted to hospitals in Muzaffarpur, India, never recovered.

3 Enduring a Durian Attack

Even exotic fruit can be deadly. In 2012 a Malaysian cyclist was killed when a basket of durian fell from his bike, delivering a severe head injury. The durian, known as the “King of Fruits,” bears a spiky shell that can reach 12 inches and weigh up to 7 lb.

Local lore claims durians have eyes that see where they fall, and warning signs often discourage lingering under trees. The fruit’s pungent odor has led many Asian transport systems, including Singapore’s hotels and taxis, to ban it – a reminder that even smell can keep you safe.

2 A Lovely Bunch of Coconuts

After all the gloom, a tropical getaway might seem safe – until a coconut drops. In 1984 a Canadian doctor claimed about 150 annual deaths worldwide from falling coconuts, a figure later disputed but still highlighting real risk. In 2010 Indian broadcasters reported the government removed all coconuts from the Gandhi Museum in Mumbai over fears they might strike President Barack Obama.

Even handling a coconut can be hazardous. In 1923 a Pennsylvanian man tried to crack a coconut with the butt of his revolver; the gun discharged, fatally wounding him in the abdomen.

1 ‘Little Apple of Death’

Finally, a fruit and tree so lethal you’d be wise to avoid it entirely. The “Machineel” tree – known in Spanish as “manazilla de la muerte,” meaning “little apple of death” – thrives along Caribbean coasts. Its sap is a powerful irritant; contact can cause severe gastroenteritis, airway swelling, and internal bleeding. The bright green fruit resembles a ripe apple but is poisonous.

Shipwrecked sailors have long fallen victim to these “paradise apples.” Legend says explorer Juan Ponce de Leon perished after encountering the plant in 1513. As Monty Python warned, “When you’re walking home tonight and some great homicidal maniac comes after you with a bunch of loganberries, don’t come crying to me!”

10 Fascinating Facts You Didn’t Know About Fruits

About The Author: Freelance aviation writer and builder of hot‑air balloons; when not soaring above clouds, I stay grounded with pen and paper.

How many of us know how the apple got its name, or the onion? We take these words for granted because they slip right off the tongue, but most of us don’t know where they come from.

Even the words ‘fruit’ and ‘vegetable’ are thrown around like they sprang up out of nowhere. In fact, the word ‘fruit’ comes from the Latin word fructus, meaning an ‘enjoyment’ or ‘delight’ as well as ‘produce’ or ‘crop’. ‘Vegetable’, on the other hand, comes from the proto-Indo-European root weg-, meaning ‘strength’ or ‘liveliness’; hence we also find weg- in ‘awake’, ‘vigor’, and other related words.

In order of unexpectedness, here are ten etymologies of fruit and veg we see every day.

10. Raspberry

It’s not exactly known where the raspberry got its name. But an earlier (1540s) form, raspis berry, may be a clue—pointing toward raspise (from Anglo-Latin vinum raspeys), a kind of sweet, rose-colored wine.

Alternatively, as with many words in English, it may be Germanic in origin. One theory suggests it comes from Old Walloon, a Belgian/French language in which ‘thicket’ (a habitat associated with the berry) is raspoie. Or it may be related to the English word rasp, meaning rough, referring to the berry’s appearance. (By the way, besides ‘apple’, ‘berry’ is the only word for fruit native to English.)

In any case, ‘to blow a raspberry’ (a fart noise through closed lips) is only tangentially related, as a shortening of “raspberry tart,” which rhymes with ‘fart’.

9. Cabbage

In the late 14th century, the English referred to cabbage by the Old North French word caboche, meaning ‘head’ (from Latin/Proto-Indo-European caput/kaput). This makes sense given we still refer to a single cabbage as a “head of cabbage”. But this association with heads is not borne out by other European languages. In Italian, cabbage is cavolo, while in Spanish it’s col, as in Old French chol and French chou—all from the Latin for cabbage, caulis. Even Germanic tongues share this Latin root. In German it’s Kohl, in Swedish kål, and in Dutch kool. (Hence ‘kale’ and ‘coleslaw’.)

So maybe ‘cabbage’ in English comes from the Latin boce, meaning ‘hump’ or ‘bump’, with the expressive prefix ca-. Still, holding a cabbage, it does kind of feel like a head.

8. Potato

‘Potato’ comes from the Taíno batata, with no mention prior to that. This is because it wasn’t until the mid-16th century that Europe had even heard of this root crop—despite its importance today. However, batata wasn’t the common white potato; it referred specifically to the sweet potato. The batata or potato, meaning ‘sweet potato’, was the first type to reach European plates, lauded by diners as “just like fine marzipan” and superior to “our passeneps or carets.”

When Sir Walter Raleigh introduced the white potato to the British Isles, a new name was obviously needed. Instead of using papa from the Andean Quechua language, as the Spanish had, the English named it “Virginia potato” after Raleigh’s New World colony. In any case, it wasn’t a hit like its sweet orange cousin. Hence it also became known as the “bastard potato,” reflecting its perceived inferiority. For a while it was grown as an ornamental plant, or fed as a cheap food to sailors.

Elsewhere in Europe, the potato was the “earth-apple”: pomme de terre in French and erdapfel in German. Other German words for the potato include kartoffel (from the Italian tartufolo, meaning ‘truffle’) and grundbirne, meaning ‘basic pear’.

7. Kiwi

Kiwifruit was unknown in the West until 1904—at least as an agricultural crop. This is when the US Department of Agriculture imported seeds and domesticated the fruit, which was known back then as yang tao. Around the same time, a New Zealander returning home from China gave seeds to some neighbors with orchards and they flourished—doing far better than any in the US. New Zealand, and the Bay of Plenty in particular, had the best conditions for growing yang tao. 

Rebranding the fruit the “Chinese gooseberry,” New Zealand exporters shipped their first 100 cases to San Francisco.  However, the name was problematic for two reasons. First, in the American imagination, ‘Chinese’ was synonymous with ‘communist’ and ‘communist’ was synonymous with ‘evil’. Second, gooseberries are prone to anthracnose fungus and, while kiwis have nothing to do with real gooseberries, the name worried US importers. Its replacement, “melonette,” didn’t work either because melons were subject to heavy tariffs. The name “kiwi” was born when a US importer asked NZ exporters to find a short Maori term that immediately calls New Zealand to mind. Kiwi was already a slang term for a New Zealander, from the Maori for the native flightless bird.

Once the name was settled, kiwis became the “fruit of the future,” an essential garnish in nouvelle cuisine and patisseries around the world—despite the French calling it souris vegetales, meaning ‘vegetable mice’.

6. Squash

A Native American staple, the squash gets its name from askutasquash—a Narragansett (Algonquian) word meaning ‘may be eaten raw or uncooked’. (Askut means ‘green’, ‘raw’, or ‘uncooked’, while ‘asquash’ means ‘eaten’.) Given how few of us have even thought about eating squash raw, this may seem like a mistake. But don’t knock it til you’ve tried it; raw squash is surprisingly palatable.

That’s not to say pre-Columbian Americans only ate it raw. Cultivated from as early as 10,000 years ago, the squash had plenty of uses. Not only was its flesh roasted, boiled, or preserved in syrup, its shoots, leaves, flowers, and seeds could also be eaten. Even the hard outer shells—which come in various colors including orange and blue—could be scooped out and used as containers.

In spite of its charms, the colonists thought the squash was beneath them… until the harsh New England winter. Then they were greedily baked as a comforting staple with fat, maple syrup, and honey.

5. Onion

The word ‘onion’ dates back to the early 12th century, when it appeared as ungeon, oinyon, and unione or in Irish as inniun and Welsh as wynwyn. Before that was the Old English ynne. All words originally derived from the Latin unionem for a kind of onion—or pearl, based on the resemblance of a string of pearls to a string of onions. The Latin word also means ‘unity’. In this context, it refers to the way an onion grows in successive layers—unlike, say, garlic, which is split into self-contained cloves.

The more common word in Latin for onion was cepa, hence the Spanish cebolla, although in Latin it had a hard ‘c’ or ‘k’ sound. This is also the origin of ‘chive’, which in English was originally cives—pronounced with a soft ‘c’ as in French.

4. Coconut

The coconut is an ancient agricultural crop, first domesticated by Southeast Asian islanders before migrating to the Pacific 4,500 years ago. Its name in these regions tends to be a variant of niu. In Europe the coconut was originally nux indica, ‘Indian nut’, because the fruit was first encountered in India. However, Indians themselves mostly knew it as naariyal. So where did ‘coconut’ come from?

Innocent as it sounds, the name actually comes from the coconut’s ghoulish appearance—at least to Portuguese colonists. The three “holes” at the base, resembling eyes and an open mouth, apparently reminded them of an Iberian folkloric “ghost-monster”, the Coco, that kidnaps and devours naughty children. (To be fair, coconuts are kind of scary; they’re said to kill more people than sharks.)

The ‘nut’ part came later, in the 1610s, and formed part of its name in taxonomy: Cocos nucifera. This is, of course, despite it not being a nut but really a very hard fruit.

3. Apple

In Old English, æppel referred to any kind of fruit—not just apples. It came from Proto-Germanic *ap(a)laz, just like Old Norse eple, Old High German apful, and Old Irish ubull. It wasn’t until the 12th century that England got ‘fruit’ from Latin via French. But æppel remained in use, appearing in eorþæppla (“earth-apples”), meaning ‘cucumbers’, fingeræppla, meaning ‘dates’ and, in 15th century Middle English, appel of paradis, meaning ‘banana’. Even as late as the 17th century, it remained a generic term for fruits and nuts.

This explains how the Bible’s unspecified “forbidden fruit” automatically became an apple when more likely it was meant to be a pomegranate. In Islam it’s believed to be wheat, hinting at the Fall represented by agriculture.

Interestingly, given the Bible connection, one etymology suggests the Proto-Germanic root of ‘apple’ actually comes from the Semitic languages of Ethiopia. According to this theory, ‘apple’ started as ‘abal meaning ‘genitals’ or ‘testicles’.

2. Eggplant

Why is a vegetable (or fruit really) that looks nothing like an egg called an eggplant? The answer is surprisingly simple: it used to. Europeans came up with the name ‘eggplant’ in the 18th century because its fruits were the size and shape of goose eggs. Even the color was similar—off-white or yellow instead of dark purple. 

This may surprise those who think ‘eggplant’ is an American word. In fact the more authentic American term is “Guinea squash,” by which the eggplant was known from the 18th century when it was first introduced from West Africa.

In Britain, it’s called an aubergine—which entered English via the Arabic al-badinjan from the Sanskrit vatimgana, meaning ‘anti-wind vegetable’. Apparently it was thought to ease flatulence.

1. Passionfruit

Although passionfruit’s beauty kind of sells itself, its name is an obvious advantage, oozing sex appeal and a tropical feel. Really, though, it couldn’t be more chaste. 

‘Passion’ in this case means the Passion of Christ, that is, the suffering and execution of the prophet. Thanks to Christian missionaries, its flower came to be known in its native South America as the flor fe las cinco lagas or the ‘flower of the five wounds’ since it was used to tell the tale of crucifixion. In their telling, the five stamens represented the five wounds Christ sustained—one in each hand and foot and one in the side. 

Other parts of the flower also played a role: the three styles represented the nails driven into the cross; the ovary represented either the vinegar-soaked sponge offered to Christ for relief or the hammer used to drive in the nails; and the corona represented the crown of thorns. The ten petals, meanwhile, represented the apostles (minus Peter and Judas) and their purple color (traditionally associated with Lent) was attributed to Christ’s blood falling from the sky.