European Food Crops

Orange Tree!

Outside the cities, European landscape quickly becomes farm land. Each country grows plants that are integral to their national products; vineyards lace across France, hops towers in the German fields, and apple orchards dot the English countryside. When we were driving around southern Portugal and Spain, I knew the plants growing in the fields adjacent to the highway were commercial, but it took me some time to identify them.

The easiest trees were the citrus trees—their branches were bulging with oranges and lemons. Next came the olive trees; they too were easy to pick out thanks to our earlier trips to Italy, and like the citrus trees, their boughs were covered in the fruit. I realized somewhat belatedly that the pine trees were cultivated for their pine nuts; I should have remembered them from Italy as well. There were two more difficult to identify species in the fields. The tall leafy trees came into my mind abruptly when I remembered seeing their picture on a pack of cough drops—eucalyptus. The last tree involved more observation to identify. I noticed the bark had been stripped off the trunks and I recalled reading about cork oaks; every 9 years the bark is carefully cut away and turned into bottle stoppers.

If you look at the bark carefully, you can see it's two different colors.
The darker color is where the cork was stripped off.

Near Granada there were also almond and pomegranate trees growing. Pomegranates are actually the symbol of Granada; they are featured in sculpture and mosaics all over the city. This should come as no surprise when you learn the Spanish word for pomegranate is granada. Unfortunately during our visit it wasn’t quite pomegranate season yet, so we didn’t eat them at every meal.