Okra's scientific name means edible father of musk
Crush an okra seed and it gives off a sweet, musky scent, which is probably why its genus name, Abelmoschus, comes from Arabic for father of musk. The species name simply means edible. The plant crossed the Atlantic on slave-trade ships and was growing in Brazil by 1658.
Okra, called lady's fingers in parts of the English-speaking world, belongs to the mallow family, which makes it a relative of cotton, cocoa and hibiscus. It is a perennial often grown as an annual, reaching about 2 metres, with deeply lobed leaves and white to yellow flowers that often carry a red or purple spot at the base. The edible pod is a capsule up to 18 centimetres long, five-sided in cross-section and packed with seeds.
Its origins are murky. It is described as native to West Africa, yet also said to have originated in Ethiopia, Eritrea and eastern Sudan. Genetically it is an allopolyploid whose parent species are uncertain, though two wild Abelmoschus relatives have been proposed, and no truly wild populations are known for sure. The English word probably comes from Igbo and first appears in 1679 in colonial Virginia. From Arabia it spread around the Mediterranean, reached Europe with the Umayyad conquest of Spain, and was described in 1216 by the traveller Abu al-Abbas al-Nabati, who saw Egyptians eating the tender young pods.
In the Americas it was recorded in Suriname in 1686 and may have reached the American south-east from Africa in the early 18th century. It grew as far north as Philadelphia by 1748, Thomas Jefferson found it well established in Virginia by 1781, and it was common across the Southern states by 1800. Today Florida grows much of the US supply, making it available ten months a year.
Okra ranks among the most heat- and drought-tolerant vegetables, coping with heavy clay and patchy moisture, though frost harms the pods. Seeds germinate best in soil of at least 20 degrees Celsius. Timing matters: pods turn woody fast and must be picked young, usually within a week of pollination, about two months after planting. Verticillium wilt is its commonest disease, and crossing with a relative produced Parbhani kranti, a variety resistant to yellow mosaic virus.
Source: Okra
