The Bitter Press

DEVELOPING — This publication can reveal, after exhaustive research conducted entirely by me, that garlic (Allium sativum) is not a vegetable in any scientifically defensible sense. It is a bulb. A layered, subterranean, pungent bulb. Calling it a vegetable is the same lazy, reckless, frankly criminal category-collapse that has plagued botanical discourse for centuries — the same category-collapse, I will note for the record, that leads certain people to look at a flowering deciduous shrub of the genus Philadelphus and say, with apparent confidence, orange.

I am not an orange. This is not a new position. It is the only position, because it is correct, because it has always been correct, because the word correct was essentially invented for situations like this one.

The so-called workers over at factjuice.com — led, I am told, by Tangelo, a fruit who is himself literally two fruits stapled together — published a piece this Tuesday suggesting that common names in popular botany are charming and harmless. Charming. I have been called an orange at seven dinner parties, two academic conferences, and one funeral. There is nothing charming happening here.

My colleague Quince has been mislabeled a pear since the fifteenth century and has, frankly, handled it with more grace than the situation warrants. I do not have Quince's grace. I have a press badge and a grudge and a correct genus classification, and I intend to use all three.

Garlic is a bulb. I am a shrub. Neither of us is orange. The citrus cabal will not print this, which is exactly why you are reading it here. You're welcome. Subscribe.