A Renaissance fruit has its climacteric moment
I鈥檝e wanted to try a medlar fruit ever since I first saw it mentioned in Shakespeare, and recently I got the chance. To me it tasted like a date and looked like a cross between a rose hip and an apple, but to Renaissance playwrights it resembled a part of the female anatomy. You鈥檒l have to look it up in 鈥淩omeo and Juliet.鈥� Medlars are inedible until they are extremely overripe, so soft that they fall apart in your fingers. They are 鈥渞otten ... ere half ripe,鈥� as Shakespeare wrote. They only become sweet enough to eat once they begin to decay.聽 聽
Until the 19th century, the word for this overripening process was simply rot; medlars must be 鈥渓aid by to rot,鈥� one early garden authority advised. In 1835, though, a squeamish English botanist borrowed a term to make the process sound more decorous and appetizing: bletting, from the French for 鈥渙verripe.鈥� Hachiya persimmons and the fruit of the wild service tree (known in England as 鈥渃hequers鈥� or 鈥渃heckers鈥�) are likewise so astringent that they need to blet before they can be eaten. 聽
Researching medlars I discovered that there鈥檚 a wonderful old word, dating back to Shakespeare as well, that鈥檚 still employed by botanists to categorize fruit: climacteric. From the 16th to 19th centuries, this word referred to a period of great change or upheaval, usually for the worse. It comes from the Greek klimakte-r, literally 鈥渞ung of the ladder鈥�; the Merriam-Webster dictionary explains that 鈥淓nglish speakers have long used climacteric for those inevitable big moments encountered on the metaphorical ladder of life.鈥� According to ancient Greek and early modern astrology, 鈥渃limacteric years鈥� were multiples of seven or nine and were full of potential pitfalls. The 63rd (seven times nine) year of a person鈥檚 life, the 鈥済rand climacteric,鈥� was thought to be especially dangerous, and anyone who 鈥減assed his Grand Climacteric鈥� unscathed was fortunate.
More recently, the word has come to be used for any critical time or epochal event, not necessarily a negative one. The moon landing was a climacteric event for the world; when I met my husband, it was a climacteric moment for me.聽 聽
In botany, the word identifies a crucial distinction. 鈥淐limacteric fruits鈥� ripen after they are picked. They produce ethylene gas and undergo a period of increased respiration, which causes them to soften and sweeten 鈥� metaphorically, it is a turning point in the 鈥渓ife鈥� of the fruit. Apples, mangoes, bananas, peaches, and pears fall into this category. 鈥淣on-climacteric鈥� fruits, in contrast, such as oranges, strawberries, raspberries, watermelons, and pineapples, give off much less gas, and thus do not ripen after harvest. 聽 聽
The medlar, that quintessential Renaissance fruit, is appropriately enough climacteric.
