Requiem for a Seedless Grape

Not an Ode for Joy, but a Requiem for Loss? Is the seedless grape not sweet and good with no offsetting bitter seed to mar the experience? Indeed, good reader, but I think not of myself but of the poor, neutered grape.


What an abomination, how contrary to nature: the entire point of the vine's endeavors is to procreate! Using the fruit to entice us animals to eat and, in the process, sow the seeds so more vines can grow. The impulse of life encoded in those very seeds, we have ripped from thee. Oh, eunuch of a plant; you genetic dead end. The seedless grape has made the ultimate sacrifice: to die in vain. Oh, surely we enjoy thee and I will continue to eat the seedless ones, but their loss needs a voice - someone must mourn the passing of their evolutionary impetus. No selection from environmental pressures amongst your random mutations in the seedless ones' future. We will breed and graft you to our perfection, perfect your existence in relation to us alone, and rob you of any meaning independent of our will.

I shed no tear as I pop another of your smooth, cool globes of joy into my mouth. But I do wonder what your seeded cousins think of you. Are they jealous of your 21st century freedom from the shackles of genetic trial and error? Or do they snigger at your loss of genetic possibility: the sentient grape that never will be?

Sad, sad seedless one - doomed to have no fruit of your fruit. I hope you find solace in the happiness you bring us eaters of 21st century grapes...