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Comment by seszett | Hacker News Reader

Argentine ants are well known for having colonised Europe and largely eradicated the local species of ants. Phylloxera almost killed the French wine industry when it arrived in Europe.

American turtles (called "Florida turtles" in French, not sure of their English name) and nutria are also invasive species in Europe, but those were initially introduced on purpose.

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Not just phylloxera but the various fungi species that create powdery and downy mildew, among other illnesses for which Vitis vinifera has no natural resistance. And therefore Europeans must now spray fungicides at a level they never had to before.

North America is the centre of diversity and likely origin of the vitis genus, and so has evolved pest resistance that the isolated Eurasian vitis vinifera/sylvestris has not.

Well, that's fascinating. I had no idea the French had the equivalent of french fries, french toast, french beans, french dip, french onion soup, french onion dip, french silk pie, and other stuff that has "french" in the name but probably has no real relationship to France.

Along those lines, "Philadelphia" cream cheese was invented in Goshen, New York. The city name was used because at the time, "Philadelphia" was synonymous with "quality."

You run into a lot of this kind of thing if you're in to word origins.

A known crowd-pleaser in this field is the "Jerusalem Artichoke"[0] which has nothing to with any of the words.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerusalem_artichoke

I'm convinced the second word was selected because prefixing an "f" tells one most of what one needs to know about this vegetable.

If you meant red-eared sliders as "Florida turtles", they're ironically banned for sale in Florida because they became an invasive species there.

Yep, that's it apparently. According to Wikipedia[0] though they are native to Florida.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red-eared_slider#Distribution_...

The really interesting thing to me is that phylloxera was combated by grafting old world vines onto new world roots. So as I understand it, most of these super old established vines in France have American roots.

Shadows in the Vineyard [0] has a chapter about this for the benefit of anybody interested in reading about the incident.

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18774145-shadows-in-the-...

I recommend the book "Dying on the Vine" by my friend George Gale: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520265486/dying-on-the-vine

"Dying on the Vine chronicles 150 years of scientific warfare against the grapevine’s worst enemy: phylloxera."

It's a very entertaining read, he tells the story excellently, and he has a deep knowledge of the subject.

(I know George through the grape breeders community.)

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