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smitty1e

Today I learned the distinction between the kiwi bird and the kiwifruit https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiwifruit

I had always thought the latter to be a New Zealand fruit that is the source of the name "kiwi".

No, kiwifruit is Chinese. The more you know.

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You were right actually. Yes it's Chinese, but it was popularized by New Zealand - hence the name !

The history of agriculture in New Zealand is very interesting - for such a small country, they sure figured out how to do it well and quite often in very innovative ways.

It's also the country that pretty much 'invented' farm raised venison.

There’s a streak of Dutch through the New Zealand demographic, and the Dutch have been famously fabulous farmers in at least some of the places they’ve inhabited.

Netherlands, South Africa, New Zealand, Tasmania and Victoria in Australia, and at least some US states that are famous for agriculture: California, Illinois, Nebraska, Iowa.

yep, we got em here in Nova Scotia, "little dutch farmers", still doing the dutch beard thing, farming with oxen, deap knowledge of traditional farming practice, oh how they can talk, and bend your ear, best pay attention, as if they like you, they will drop a significant observation into an otherwise seemingly pointless ramble, but as they say....you have to catch it get them in Pennsylvania too, though less obviously out of a clasic painting from the 17th century

The Dutch largely arrived here post WW2, we were doing a bunch of agriculture before then, rest assured.

Didn’t the Dutch acquire New York back in 1613?

Here was referring specifically to New Zealand, apologies for confusion :)

I'd give credit to the Hobbits, they were great farmers!

But they suffer from the same inefficiencies as truffle-hunting pigs: they tend to eat all their produce before making it to market.

Weight-conscious NZ human farmers have the advantage there.

I've seen the word "kiwi" used to refer to the fruit in the US, which just seems odd to me, like calling a pineapple a pine. In my part of teh world its a kiwifruit, not a kiwi.

A kiwi is a New Zealander. In fact while they're both named after the bird, the bird is more often called a kiwi bird than just a kiwi.

Yes us Americans just say kiwis instead of kiwifruits. Not too many kiwi birds or New Zealanders in the states so there's not much confusion

UK people also mostly just call it "kiwi" instead of "kiwifruit". Similar lack of kiwi birds but we do have a fair few kiwi people (at least in London.)

American here. I can state authoritatively I've never confused a greenish fruit with an expatriate of a peri-Australian island.

As a New Zealander, it seems like everywhere other than NZ the default is calling it a "kiwi" instead of "kiwifruit"

I think this is more or less correct. Presumably because the need to distinguish between kiwi fruits and New Zealanders is less important in most other places than in NZ.

German here, it's exclusively Kiwi here, never Kiwifrucht (kiwifruit).

I’ve never heard of anyone calling it a kiwi bird, in NZ or anywhere else.

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