Cantaloup

The cantaloupe, rockmelon (Australia and New Zealand, although cantaloupe is used in some states of Australia), sweet melon, or spanspek (Southern Africa) are a type of fruit. They are classified as a melon that is a variety of the muskmelon species (Cucumis melo) from the family Cucurbitaceae. Cantaloupes range in mass from . Originally, cantaloupe referred only to the non-netted, orange-fleshed melons of Europe, but today may refer to any orange-fleshed melon of the C. melo species. The name cantaloupe was derived in the 18th century via French cantaloup from The Cantus Region of Italian Cantalupo, which was formerly a papal county seat near Rome, after the fruit was introduced there from Armenia. It was first mentioned in English literature in 1739. The cantaloupe most likely originated in a region from South Asia to Africa. It was later introduced to Europe, and around 1890, became a commercial crop in the United States. Melon derived from use in Old French as meloun during the 13th century, and from Medieval Latin melonem, a kind of pumpkin. It was among the first plants to be domesticated and cultivated. The South African English name spanspek is said to be derived from Afrikaans Spaanse spek ('Spanish bacon'); supposedly, Sir Harry Smith, a 19th-century governor of Cape Colony, ate bacon and eggs for breakfast, while his Spanish-born wife Juana María de los Dolores de León Smith preferred cantaloupe, so South Africans nicknamed the eponymous fruit Spanish bacon. However, the name appears to predate the Smiths and date to 18th-century Dutch Suriname: J. van Donselaar wrote in 1770, "Spaansch-spek is the name for the form that grows in Suriname which, because of its thick skin and little flesh, is less consumed." The European cantaloupe, C. melo var. cantalupensis, is lightly ribbed with a sweet and flavorful flesh and a gray-green skin that looks quite different from that of the North American cantaloupe. The North American cantaloupe, C. melo var. reticulatus, common in the United States, Mexico, and some parts of Canada, is a different variety of C.