Vegeta (food)

Vegeta is a condiment which is a mixture primarily of salt with flavour enhancers, spices and various vegetables invented in 1959 by a Croatian scientist Zlata Bartl, and has become a product sold worldwide. The copyright for the product's name was waived off by manga artist Akira Toriyama.

Vegeta is produced by Podravka, a company from Koprivnica, Croatia, as well as a subsidiary of Podravka in Poland and two Vegeta licensees from Austria and Hungary. There have been around 50 instances of other companies attempting to reproduce the product.

Vegeta was conceived in 1958 in Podravka's laboratories and professor Zlata Bartl was head of the team that invented it. The product was first sold in Yugoslavia in 1959 as "Vegeta 40", and has since become so popular that the production increased by several orders of magnitude. In 1967 Vegeta was first exported to Hungary and the USSR and is now sold in around 40 countries worldwide.

There is also a "no MSG added" version for those avoiding Monosodium Glutamate.

Vegeta

Vegeta (Japanese: ベジータ, Hepburn: Bejīta) is a fictional character in the Dragon Ball manga series created by Akira Toriyama. Vegeta first appears as a major antagonist in chapter #204 Goodbye Son Goku (さようなら孫悟空, Sayōnara Son Gokū), published in Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine on December 19, 1988, seeking the wish-granting Dragon Balls to gain immortality.

As prince of the Saiyans, an extraterrestrial race of warriors that the series' protagonist Son Goku also belongs to, Vegeta is extremely vain, believing he is the strongest and becoming obsessed with surpassing Goku. He later reluctantly unites with the heroes to thwart greater threats to the universe, becoming an antihero, while remaining a rival to Goku. Vegeta's character, particularly his personality, has been well received.

Creation and design

Following the trend that names of members of the Saiyan race are puns on vegetables, Vegeta's name is a pun of the word vegetable itself. Toriyama stated that when he received a lot of fan mail telling him not to kill Vegeta, he purposely did just that. Vegeta is the prince of the Saiyan race, being the son of King Vegeta, with Planet Vegeta named after his father. Vegeta is shown to be exceptionally vain and egotistical. Only in very few instances is he seen to be afraid of opponents, such as against Freeza. Arguably, his most defining trait is his rivalry with Goku and obsession to surpass him in power.

Ulmus × hollandica 'Vegeta' (Huntingdon Elm)

Ulmus × hollandica 'Vegeta', sometimes known as the Huntingdon Elm, is an old English hybrid cultivar raised at Brampton, near Huntingdon, by nurserymen Wood & Ingram in 1746, allegedly from seed collected from an Ulmus × hollandica hybrid at nearby Hinchingbrooke Park. The tree was given the epithet 'Vegeta' by Loudon, a name previously accorded the Chichester Elm by Donn, as Loudon considered the two trees identical. The latter is indeed a similar cultivar, but raised much earlier in the 18th century from a tree growing at Chichester Hall, Rawreth in Essex.

Description

In areas unaffected by Dutch elm disease, Huntingdon Elms commonly grow to over 35 m, bearing long, straight branches ascending from a short bole < 4  in height; the bole of mature trees has distinctive lattice-patterned bark-ridges which serve to distinguish the tree from that other popular U. × hollandica cultivar 'Major', known as 'Dutch Elm', whose bark breaks into small shallow flakes. The glossy, oval leaves have petioles >10 mm long, which serve to distinguish the tree from the Wych Elm, and are very distinctly asymmetric at the base, < 12 cm long by < 7.5 cm broad contracting to an acuminate apex. The leaves are borne on smooth branchlets that never feature corky wings. The tightly-clustered apetalous flowers are bright red, and appear in early spring. The samarae are obovate, < 25 mm long.

Ulmus × hollandica 'Vegeta' (Chichester Elm)

The hybrid cultivar Chichester Elm is the original Ulmus × hollandica 'Vegeta', but suffered confusion with the later Huntingdon Elm hybrid by John Claudius Loudon, to which he also accorded the epithet 'Vegeta' as he found the two cultivars indistinguishable. The cultivar was cloned at the beginning of the 18th century from a tree growing at Chichester Hall, Rawreth, near Danbury, in Essex, England, then the home of Thomas Holt White FRS, brother of the naturalist Gilbert White.

Description

A very tall tree, with foliage similar to that of the Huntingdon Elm. The Rev. Adam Buddle originally identified the tree as 'a smooth leaf Wych Elm'

Pests and diseases

The tree is susceptible to Dutch elm disease.

Cultivation

Examples of the tree were presented in 1711 by Adam Buddle to the Chelsea Physic Garden; Buddle held a living at North Fambridge, not far from Rawreth. Adam Holt, relative of Thomas Holt, distributed the elms nationwide in the 1720s. Chichester Elms were known to have been marketed in 1801 by nurseryman George Lindley, father of the eminent botanist Professor John Lindley FRS, at Norwich. The origin of the connexion with Norwich is not known, nor is the origin of the claimed source of the tree in later 19th century catalogues as 'North America'. The tree is known to have been marketed in Australia in the early 20th century by the former Gembrook Nursery, but no examples are known to survive. There is no record of the tree's introduction to North America.