The morning name for the 24th. The word has appeared on this blog once before, in a list of intrinsically funny names (hey, these things are obviously subjective), but without any indication of what the word refers to. I would have guessed that it was a local name for a type of bivalve, a clam or oyster, from the rocky shores of New England. But then I never lived in coastal North Carolina, where the scuppernongs come from.
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From Wikipedia:
The scuppernong … is a large variety of muscadine (Vitis rotundifolia), a species of grape native to the Southern United States. It is usually a greenish or bronze color and is similar in appearance and texture to a white grape, but rounder and larger and first known as the ‘big white grape’. The grape is commonly known as the “scuplin” in some areas of the Deep South. It is also known as the “scufalum”, “scupanon”, “scupadine” or “scufadine” in some parts of the South. The scuppernong is the state fruit of North Carolina.
The name comes from the Scuppernong River in North Carolina mainly along the coastal plain. It was first mentioned as a “white grape” in a written logbook by the Florentine explorer Giovanni de Verrazzano while exploring the Cape Fear River Valley in 1524.
… Possibly the oldest cultivated grapevine in the world is the 400-year-old scuppernong “Mother Vine” growing on Roanoke Island, North Carolina.
And there is wine:
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The labels on the two middle bottles depict the Cape Hatteras (NC) Lighthouse. The one on the right shows the Old Baldy Lighthouse on Bald Head Island (historically Smith Island) along the Cape Fear River in North Carolina.
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