Honeydew is a cultivar group

Cultivar group

In naming cultivated plants, a Group is a formal classification category, under the International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants :The term "Group" was introduced in the 2004 ICNCP, replacing the "Cultivar-group" of the 1995 ICNCP.A Group is united by some common trait; for example...

 of the muskmelon

Muskmelon

Muskmelon is a species of melon that has been developed into many cultivated varieties. These include smooth skinned varieties such as honeydew, crenshaw and casaba, and different netted cultivars...

, Cucumis melo Inodorus group, which includes crenshaw, casaba, Persian, winter, and other mixed melon

Melon

thumb|200px|Various types of melonsThis list of melons includes members of the plant family Cucurbitaceae with edible, fleshy fruit e.g. gourds or cucurbits. The word "melon" can refer to either the plant or specifically to the fruit...

s.

Characteristics

A honeydew has a round to slightly oval shape, typically 15 centimetre long. It generally ranges in weight from 1.8 kilogram. The flesh is usually pale green in color, while the smooth peel ranges from greenish to yellow. Like most fruit

Fruit

In broad terms, a fruit is a structure of a plant that contains its seeds.The term has different meanings dependent on context. In non-technical usage, such as food preparation, fruit normally means the fleshy seed-associated structures of certain plants that are sweet and edible in the raw state,...

, honeydew has seed

Seed

A seed is a small embryonic plant enclosed in a covering called the seed coat, usually with some stored food. It is the product of the ripened ovule of gymnosperm and angiosperm plants which occurs after fertilization and some growth within the mother plant...

s. Honeydew's thick, juicy, sweet flesh is often eaten for dessert

Dessert

In cultures around the world, dessert is a course that typically comes at the end of a meal, usually consisting of sweet food. The word comes from the French language as dessert and this from Old French desservir, "to clear the table" and "to serve." Common Western desserts include cakes, biscuits,...

, and is commonly found in supermarket

Supermarket

A supermarket, a form of grocery store, is a self-service store offering a wide variety of food and household merchandise, organized into departments...

s across the world. This fruit grows best in semiarid climates and is harvested based on maturity, not size.

In California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

, the honeydew is in season from August until October.

The winter melon variety of honeydew melon should not be confused with the homonym

Homonym

In linguistics, a homonym is, in the strict sense, one of a group of words that often but not necessarily share the same spelling and the same pronunciation but have different meanings...

ous winter melon

Winter melon

The winter melon, also called white gourd, ash gourd, or "fuzzy melon", is a vine grown for its very large fruit, eaten as a vegetable when mature. It is the only member of the genus Benincasa. The fruit is fuzzy when young. The immature melon has thick white flesh that is sweet when eaten...

, more popularly found in Africa.

Origin and alternate names

"Honeydew" is in fact the American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 name for the White Antibes cultivar which has been grown for many years in southern France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 and Algeria

Algeria

Algeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...

. In China

People's Republic of China

China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...

, honeydews are known as the Bailan melon

Bailan melon

The Bailan melon is a locally famous type of melon grown near Lanzhou, the capital city of Gansu province in the People's Republic of China....

; they are a locally famous product near Lanzhou

Lanzhou

Lanzhou is the capital and largest city of Gansu Province in Northwest China. A prefecture-level city, it is a key regional transportation hub, allowing areas further west to maintain railroad connections to the eastern half of the country....

, the capital city of Gansu

Gansu

' is a province located in the northwest of the People's Republic of China.It lies between the Tibetan and Huangtu plateaus, and borders Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, and Ningxia to the north, Xinjiang and Qinghai to the west, Sichuan to the south, and Shaanxi to the east...

 province in China's northwest. According to Chinese sources, the melons were introduced to China by a Mr. Wallace, Vice president of the United States

Vice President of the United States

The Vice President of the United States is the holder of a public office created by the United States Constitution. The Vice President, together with the President of the United States, is indirectly elected by the people, through the Electoral College, to a four-year term...

, who donated melon seeds to the locals while visiting in the 1940s (probably 1944). This man was almost certainly Henry A. Wallace

Henry A. Wallace

Henry Agard Wallace was the 33rd Vice President of the United States , the Secretary of Agriculture , and the Secretary of Commerce . In the 1948 presidential election, Wallace was the nominee of the Progressive Party.-Early life:Henry A...

, Vice president under Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who had a background in agriculture

Agriculture

Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...

 and had founded a major seed

Seed

A seed is a small embryonic plant enclosed in a covering called the seed coat, usually with some stored food. It is the product of the ripened ovule of gymnosperm and angiosperm plants which occurs after fertilization and some growth within the mother plant...

 company, Pioneer Hi-Bred

Pioneer Hi-Bred

Pioneer Hi-Bred is the largest U.S. producer of hybrid seeds for agriculture.- History :In 1926, farm journal editor and future U.S. Vice President Henry A. Wallace, along with a group of Des Moines, Iowa businessmen, founded the "Hi-Bred Corn Company". At the time, most corn farmers saved part of...

. As a result, in China the melon is sometimes called the Wallace (Chinese: 华莱士; pinyin

Pinyin

Pinyin is the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet in China, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan. It is also often used to teach Mandarin Chinese and spell Chinese names in foreign publications and used as an input method to enter Chinese characters into...

: Hualaishi).
The honeydew was extremely popular among the European working classes of the 19th and 20th century. Karl Marx once called honeydew the "fruit of the masses."