Category: Plants

2012
Japanese Moon Melon
The caption that frequently accompanies this image claims that this colorful fruit is known as 'moon melon' in Japan, where it's grown. Also, it can "switch flavors after you eat it. Everything sour will taste sweet, and everything salty will taste bitter, and it gives water a strong orange-like taste." None of this is true. The fruit in the picture is just regular red watermelon that's been colored blue via Photoshop.
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Feb 2007
Giant Tomatoes
These are just normal-sized tomatoes, but the angle of the photo makes them appear enormously large. This image was taken by Claro Cortes for Reuters and shows a Chinese farmer tending organic tomatoes in a greenhouse near Beijing.
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1911
The Melon Party
A postcard created by Alfred Stanley Johnson of Waupun, Wisconsin. In order to create the illusion of a children's party featuring a giant watermelon, Johnson made the children pose while holding a wooden prop. He then cut and pasted a picture of a watermelon slice into the picture to create the finished postcard. In order to create this postcard of children eating a giant watermelon, photographer Alfred Stanley Johnson used wooden props.
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1894
Mammoth Potato of Loveland
Colorado farmer Joseph Swan created this amusing photo (with help from a local photographer) as a tongue-in-cheek ad to show off his potato-growing skills. But copies of the photo began to circulate, and soon it was being reprinted in magazines as a supposedly real photo, causing Swan to receive hundreds of letters from people seeking seeds from his "mammoth potato" so they could grow their own. This is a very early example of a "viral" fake photo.
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