That is what I call ‘wisdom’ and ‘expertise’. The wisest expert in any field of knowledge is self aware of how little they know about their area of expertise, while being humble enough to acknowledge they also probably know more about the subject than at least 7.5 billion or so other people.
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The amount of things I don’t know I don’t know is immeasurably vast. Far greater than the things I know, for sure. When someone asks a question that seems obvious, at least they’re curious! I’d rather them ask than go on going through life not knowing. This comic summarizes it perfectly to me: xkcd: Ten Thousand
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They clearly have some weird pears where your boss shops, lemon plums aren’t even pear shaped. 
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One time I brought bite-size, cut-up Orangeglo watermelon to work. Several asked if those orange-colored pieces were peaches. Once I told them it’s watermelon, hardly anyone touched it. It is too odd to them.
Needless to say, I work with a lot of non-adventurous folks.
Then, a few friends asked me what long, pale green fruit on the ground were. I told them they were Charleston Gray watermelons. They thought they were some kinds of squashes. To them, watermelons should look like Crimson Sweet or Black Diamond.
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I was talking to a coworker about the different types of fruits I grow and mentioned pluots, and how they are hybrids of plums and apricots and are very sweet. He then responded that hybrid fruits are always very sweet, and gave an example of “Grapples”, that are a hybrid of grapes and apples. I then told him that I never heard about “grapples” before, plus it is impossible to have a hybrid between apples and grapes. After some questioning from me, I came to the conclusion that what he was calling “grapples” are crabapples, and because they are small (and I am not sure if he confused the c with the g, or there is a marketed variety with grapple trade name) he jumped into the conclusion that they are a hybrid of grapes and apples! I was speechless… and frankly exercised great self control not to crack up…
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It’s far worse:
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I confess that I once bought grapples at a local Chinese grocery store.
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Reminds me of the “strawberry guava” that weird fruit explorer tasted that was guava soaked in strawberry syrup
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I would be very angry if I bought strawberry guava and it wasn’t this:
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I had a nearly identical experience once. I hopped off the shuttle bus, bike in hand in the quaint little square at the top of town in Bar Harbor, ME and was immediately greeted by a hedge row of cultivar saskatoons just loaded to the gills with perfectly ripe fruit. I immediately started picking them and eating them ravenously. A few people came up and asked what they were and whether they were poisonous, but walked away when I suggested they try a few. Then a young boy about 8 yrs old or so sauntered over curiously. He started to ask about the berries but his mother intervened, grabbing his hand and ushering him off with a mild scolding that “we dont eat things that grow on trees” or some such
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Just think how odd they think we are!
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I was renovating a customers house back before i was growing fruit trees, but was still into foraging and gardening, and I discovered a tree loaded with these odd orange fruits. I was curious so i started looking through google images, and eventually learned that they were loquats. I tried a few that had fallen on the ground and was blown away. It was like a cross between a mango and a peach. I asked the homeowner about it and he said that he hated that tree. He didn’t know what it was, he just knew that every few years it made a mess. In our area for a loquat to fruit unprotected is exceptional.
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I was once part of a garden tour and a visitor asked if my Imperial Epineuse plum was an olive tree. Aside from leaf shape and the 1000 mile distance from an olive growing region, I guess the fruit look similar!
olive:
plum:
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I’m always shocked when people don’t want to try fruit. I got a durian last summer and other than my wife no one in my immediate family would try it, because “it stinks” which I would be fine with had they even smelled it. Gave them a pawpaw when I ordered myself some and they let it rot. Needless to say I don’t share my precious fruit much with them anymore haha
On a semi unrelated note giving people a kumquat for the first time telling them they eat it whole like a grape, they almost all think you are pulling a practical joke on them. So if I plan to give anyone one I need to have one for myself so they can witness how to eat it.
I had this more or less happen eating wild persimmons
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A neighbor thought a pawpaw might be an insect; another thought it was a bird. 9 out of 10 people here do not know it even exists, although they vaguely recall the nursery rhyme.
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I often snack on wild berries when out working in the field. Once tried to hand some salmonberries to a co-worker who couldn’t get over his hesitance to try some and said he didn’t eat things from the woods. This from a guy who ate McDonald’s 2 meals a day when on the road. I was offended on behalf of nature.
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It’s really sad isn’t it. People willingly eat actual poison at almost every meal but have been tricked into believing nature is poison
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Well nature does make the best poisons. I think it’s good advice not to eat something if you don’t know what it is. The ignorance is surprising yet it’s not.
“The most abundant element in the universe is not hydrogen, it’s stupidity” - Frank Zappa
I used to think this was overkill, but now in my late sixties I have to agree. I saw it for myself too many times.
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This could be said about anything, and while it’s not incorrect I still believe it’s an injustice upon humans that we separate ourselves from nature. So yes all the best poisons are made by nature, but so are all of the food, vitamins and nutrients we need to survive. I just find it odd that people are completely uninterested in learning about wild edible forage and identification which had to have been mastered and passed down for thousands of years only for modernity to try hard to forget this precious knowledge. Although it’s good advice to not eat first and ask questions later haha
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