In Numbers 11: 5-6, the freed Hebrews fed on a manna-only diet, lamenting the rich variety of food they gave up on leaving Egypt — including watermelon. An apple we commonly think of as the forbidden fruit, but the Bible never actually says what fruit it was, and the apple didn’t come along until the age of King Solomon, which was thousands of years after Adam and Eve were eating mangoes in the Garden of Eden. It could have been a watermelon, but regardless, the effects were fatal for Eve and Adam.
The watermelon is a creeping plant with triangular and trilobed leaves and small yellowish flowers, generating a rounded or elongated fruit, with a red, juicy and sweet pulp, with a high water content (about 92%) and a diameter varying between 25 and 140 cm. cm. The bark is green and glossy, with dark streaks.
The diverse evidence, combined, indicates that northeastern Africa was the centre of origin of the dessert watermelon, that watermelons were domesticated for water and food there over 4000 years ago. Sweet dessert watermelons emerged in Mediterranean lands by approximately 2000 years ago. The C. lanatus produces a fruit that is about 93% water, making it the majority of it water, hence the name “water” melon. The “melon” part came from the fact that the fruit is large and round and has a sweet, pulpy flesh.