Scuppernongs

I was born in North Carolina and lived for several years in the western part of the state, but I had never heard of scuppernongs, the North Carolina state fruit, until recently. As you can see from the photograph they are a type of wild grape, a bronze muscadine, and Giovanni de Verrazzano wrote about wild North Carolina grapes in his log as early as 1524.

According to Wikipedia, the fruit is named after the Scuppernong River in coastal North Carolina, which explains why I might not have heard of it in the foothills of western Carolina. Also, it is mentioned a couple of times in To Kill a Mockingbird, which pleases me as a lawyer from the South.