vegetable · foodway9 bonds · 9 sourced

chayote

The plant is Mesoamerican; the map of its names is a map of colonial shipping.

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Cultural layer

Origin

Mesoamerica; Sechium edule, a pale green gourd domesticated in Mexico and Central America, named from the Nahuatl chayohtli

Routes

Spread worldwide through colonial trade and now grown across Asia, Africa and the Caribbean, where it is chocho, christophine, chow chow and mirliton depending on the coast

Context

Chayote has a different name in almost every place it landed, which is the signature of a plant that travelled fast and cheaply. It is christophine in the French Caribbean, mirliton in Louisiana, chow chow in India. Each name marks a separate arrival. The plant is Mesoamerican; the map of its names is a map of colonial shipping.

Behind this layer

Diccionario Enciclopédico de la Gastronomía Mexicana (Ricardo Muñoz Zurita, 2012)

Route

Pending

The routes are written. They are not yet mapped.

This entry's cultural layer already names where it came from and how it moved. What it does not yet carry is that movement as structure: ordered waypoints with real coordinates, and a mechanism on each leg. Until it does, the layer stays an empty slot rather than a drawn line, because a map built from prose would be a guess with a projection under it.

1 of 404 entries carries a mapped route · nutmeg is the prototype

What renders here when it lands