ratio of word probabilities predicted from brain for spoon and carrot

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spoon

carrot

top 10 words in brain distribution (in article):
steel head cut handle metal type shape form hammer edge top 10 words in brain distribution (in article):
plant fruit produce drink grow seed species sugar leaf flower

top 10 words in brain distribution (not in article):
iron blade cell hair tool design size hand nail whip top 10 words in brain distribution (not in article):
light lamp water wine beer animal tree bottle contain time

times more probable under spoon 30 20 10 6 4 2.5 1.25 1 1.25 2.5 4 6 10 20 30 times more probable under carrot
(words not in the model)

A spoon'" is a utensil consisting of a small shallow bowl, oval or round, at the end of a handle. A type of cutlery (usually called flatware in the United States), especially as part of a place setting, it is used primarily for serving and eating liquid or semisolid food (sometimes called "spoon-meat"), and solid foods such as rice and cereal which cannot easily be lifted with a fork. Spoons are also used in food preparation to measure, mix, stir and toss ingredients. They can be made from metal (notably flat silver or silverware, plated or solid), wood or plastic. Abbreviation: sp. History. The earliest northern European spoon would seem to have been a chip or splinter of wood; Greek references point to the early and natural use of shells, such as those that are still used by primitive peoples. Ancient Indian texts also refer to the use of spoons. For example, the Rigveda refers to spoons during a passage describing the reflection of light as it "touches the spoon's mouth" (RV 8.43.10). Preserved examples of various forms of spoons used by the ancient Egyptians include those composed of ivory, flint, slate and wood; many of them carved with religious symbols. The spoons of the Greeks and Romans were chiefly made of bronze and silver and the handle usually takes the form of a spike or pointed stem. There are many examples in the British Museum from which the forms of the various types can be ascertained, the chief points of difference being found in the junction of the bowl with the handle. Middle Ages spoons at Chillon Castel Medieval spoons for domestic use were commonly made of cow horn or wood, but brass, pewter, and latten spoons appear to have been common in about the 15th century. The full descriptions and entries relating to silver spoons in the inventories of the royal and other households point to their special value and rarity. The earliest English reference appears to be in a will of 1259. In the wardrobe accounts of Edward I for the year 1300 some gold and silver spoons marked with the "fleur-de-lis", the Paris mark, are mentioned. One of the most interesting medieval spoons is the coronation spoon used in the anointing of the English sovereign. The sets of Apostle Spoons, popular as christening presents in Tudor times, the handles of which terminate in heads or busts of the apostles, are a special form to which antiquarian interest attaches. The earlier English spoon-handles terminate in an acorn, plain knob or a diamond; at the end of the 16th century, the baluster and seal ending becomes common, the bowl being fig-shaped. During The Restoration, the handle becomes broad and flat, the bowl is broad and oval and the termination is cut into the shape known as the hind's foot. In the first quarter of the 18th century, the bowl becomes narrow and elliptical, with a tongue or rat's tail down the back, and the handle is turned up at the end. The modern form, with the tip of the bowl narrower than the base and the rounded end of the handle turned down, came into use about 1760. Types and uses. Spoons are used primarily for eating liquid or semi-liquid foods, such as soup, stew or ice cream, and very small or powdery solid items which cannot be easily lifted with a fork, such as rice, sugar, cereals and green peas. In Southeast Asia, spoons are the primary utensil used for eating; forks are used only to push food onto the spoon. Spoons are also widely used in cooking and serving. In baking, batter is usually thin enough to pour or drop from a spoon; a mixture of such consistency is sometimes called "drop batter”. Rolled dough dropped from a spoon to a cookie sheet can be made into rock cakes and other cookies, while johnnycake may be prepared by dropping spoonfuls of cornmeal onto a hot greased griddle. A spoon is similarly useful in processing jelly, sugar and syrup. A test sample of jelly taken from a boiling mass may be allowed to slip from a spoon in a sheet, in a step called "sheeting". At the "crack" stage, syrup from boiling sugar may be dripped from a spoon, causing it to break with a snap when chilled. When boiled to 240°F. and poured from a spoon, sugar forms a filament, or "thread". Hot syrup is said to "pearl" when it forms such a long thread without breaking when dropped from a spoon. Used for stirring, a spoon is passed through a substance with a continued circular movement for the purpose of mixing, blending, dissolving, cooling, or preventing sticking of the ingredients. Mixed drinks may be "muddled" by working a spoon to crush and mix ingredients such as mint and sugar on the bottom of a glass or mixer. Spoons are employed for mixing certain kinds of powder into water to make a sweet or nutritious drink. A spoon may also be employed to toss ingredients by mixing them lightly until they are well coated with a dressing. A spoonful'"—the amount of material a spoon contains or can contain—is used as a standard unit of measure for volume in cooking, where it normally signifies a "'teaspoonful'". It is abbreviated "coch" or "cochl", from Latin "cochleare". "Teaspoonful" is often used in a similar way to describe the dosage for over the counter medicines. Dessert spoonful and tablespoonful may also be found in drink and food recipes. A teaspoon holds about 5ml and a tablespoon about 15ml. For storage, spoons and knives were sometimes placed in paired "knife boxes", which were often ornate wooden containers with sloping top, used especially during the 18th century. On the table, an ornamental utensil called a "nef", shaped like a ship, might hold a napkin, knife and spoon. The souvenir spoon generally exists solely as a decorative object commemorating an event, place, or special date. Spoons can also be used as a musical instrument. To "spoon-feed" oneself or another can simply mean to feed by means of a spoon. Metaphorically, however, it often means to present something to a person or group so thoroughly or wholeheartedly as to preclude the need of independent thought, initiative or self-reliance on the part of the recipient; or to present information in a slanted version, with the intent to preclude questioning or revision. Someone who accepts passively what has been offered in this way is said to have been spoon-fed. Manufacture. For machine-made spoons, the basic shape is cut out from a sheet of sterling silver, nickel silver alloy or stainless steel. The bowl is cross rolled between two pressurized rollers to produce a thinner section. The handle section is also rolled to produce the width needed for the top end. The blank is then cropped to the required shape, and two dies are used to apply the pattern to the blank. The fash is then removed using a lynisher, and the bowl is formed between two dies and bent. To make a spoon the traditional by way of handforging, a bar of silver is marked up to the correct proportions for the bowl and handle. It is then heated until red hot and held in tongs and using the hammer and anvil, beaten into shape. The tip of the bar is pointed to form the tip of the bowl, then hammered to form the bowl. If a heel is to be added, a section down the centre is left thicker. The edges of the bowl and the tip of the spoon are left thicker as this is where most of the thickness is needed. The handle is then started and hammered out to length going from thick at the neck and gradually tapering down in thickness giving a balanced feel. During this process the piece becomes very hard and has to be annealed several times, then worked again until the final shape is achieved. The bowl is filed to shape, often using a metal template. The bowl is then formed using a tin cake and spoon The carrot'" ("Daucus carota" subsp. "sativus", Etymology: Middle French "carotte", from Late Latin "carōta", from Greek "karōton", originally from the Indoeuropean root "ker-" (horn), due to its horn-like shape) is a root vegetable, usually orange or white, or red-white blend in colour, with a crisp texture when fresh. The edible part of a carrot is a taproot. It is a domesticated form of the wild carrot "Daucus carota", native to Europe and southwestern Asia. It has been bred for its greatly enlarged and more palatable, less woody-textured edible taproot, but is still the same species. It is a biennial plant which grows a rosette of leaves in the spring and summer, while building up the stout taproot, which stores large amounts of sugars for the plant to flower in the second year. The flowering stem grows to about 1 metre (3 ft) tall, with an umbel of white flowers that produce a fruit called a mericarp by botanists, which is a type of schizocarp. Uses and nutrition. Carrots can be eaten in a variety of ways. The simplest way is raw as carrots are perfectly digestible without requiring cooking. Alternatively they may be chopped and boiled, fried or steamed, and cooked in soups and stews, as well as baby and pet foods. A well known dish is "carrots julienne". Grated carrots are used in carrot cakes, as well as carrot puddings, an old English dish thought to have originated in the early 1800s. The greens are edible as a leaf vegetable, but are rarely eaten by humans, as they are mildly toxic. Together with onion and celery, carrots are one of the primary vegetables used in a "mirepoix" to make various broths. Ever since the late 1980s, baby carrots or mini-carrots (carrots that have been peeled and cut into uniform cylinders) have been a popular ready-to-eat snack food available in many supermarkets. Carrot juice is also widely marketed, especially as a health drink, either stand-alone or blended with fruits and other vegetables. The carrot gets its characteristic and bright orange colour from β-carotene, which is metabolised into vitamin A in humans when bile salts are present in the intestines. Massive overconsumption of carrots can cause hypercarotenemia, a condition in which the skin turns orange (although hypercarotenemia is not itself dangerous unlike overdose of vitamin A, which can cause liver damage). Carrots are also rich in dietary fibre, antioxidants, and minerals. Lack of Vitamin A can cause poor vision, including night vision, and vision can be restored by adding Vitamin A back into the diet. The urban legend that says eating large amounts of carrots will allow one to see in the dark developed from stories of British gunners in World War II who were able to shoot down German planes in the darkness of night. The legend arose during the Battle of Britain when the RAF circulated a story about their pilots' carrot consumption as an attempt to cover up the discovery and effective use of radar technologies in engaging enemy planes. It reinforced existing German folklore and helped to encourage Britons—looking to improve their night vision during the blackouts—to grow and eat the vegetable. Ethnomedically, the roots are used to treat digestive problems, intestinal parasites, and tonsillitis or constipation. History. The wild ancestors of the carrot are likely to have come from Afghanistan, which remains the centre of diversity of "D. carota", the wild carrot. Selective breeding over the centuries of a naturally-occurring subspecies of the wild carrot, "Daucus carota" subsp. "sativus" reducing bitterness, increasing sweetness and minimizing the woody core, has produced the familiar garden vegetable. In early use, carrots were grown for their aromatic leaves and seeds, not their roots. Some relatives of the carrot are still grown for these, such as parsley, fennel, dill and cumin. The first mention of the root in classical sources is in the 1st century CE. The modern carrot appears to have been introduced to Europe in the 8-10th centuries; Ibn al-Awam, in Andalusia, describes both red and yellow carrots; Simeon Seth also mentions both colours in the 11th century. Orange-coloured carrots appeared in the Netherlands in the 17th century. These, the modern carrots, were intended by the antiquary John Aubrey (1626-1697) when he noted in his memoranda "Carrots were first sown at Beckington in Somersetshire Some very old Man there [in 1668] did remember their first bringing hither." In addition to wild carrot, these alternative (mostly historical) names are recorded for "Daucus carota": Bee's-nest, Bee's-nest plant, Bird's-nest, Bird's-nest plant, Bird's-nest root, Carota, Carotte (French), Carrot, Common carrot, Crow's-nest, Daucon, Dawke, Devil's-plague, Fiddle, Gallicam, Garden carrot, Gelbe Rübe (German), Gingidium, Hill-trot, Laceflower, Mirrot, Möhre (German), Parsnip (misapplied), Queen Anne's lace, Rantipole, Staphylinos, and Zanahoria. The parsnip is a close relative of the carrot, as is parsley. Cultivars. Carrot cultivars can be grouped into two broad classes, eastern carrots'" and "'western carrots'". More recently, a number of novelty cultivars have been bred for particular characteristics. The world's largest carrot was grown in Palmer, Alaska by John Evans in 1998, weighing 8.6 kg (19 lb). The city of Holtville, California promotes itself as "Carrot Capital of the World", and holds an annual festival devoted entirely to the carrot. Eastern carrots. Eastern carrots were domesticated in Central Asia, probably in modern-day Afghanistan in the 10th century, or possibly earlier. Specimens of the eastern carrot that survive to the present day are commonly purple or yellow, and often have branched roots. The purple colour common in these carrots comes from anthocyanin pigments. Western carrots. The western carrot emerged in the Netherlands in the 17th century, its orange colour making it popular in those countries as an emblem of the House of Orange and the struggle for Dutch independence. The orange colour results from abundant carotenes in these cultivars. While orange carrots are the norm in the West, other colours do exist, including white, yellow, red, and purple. These other colours of carrot are raised primarily as novelty crops. The Vegetable Improvement Center at Texas A&M University has developed a purple-skinned, orange-fleshed carrot, the "BetaSweet" (also known as the Maroon Carrot), with substances to prevent cancer, which has recently entered very limited commercial distribution, through J&D Produce of Edinburg TX. This variety of carrot is also known to be high in β-carotene which is an essential nutrient. The high concentrations of this nutrient give the carrot its maroon shade. Western carrot cultivars are commonly classified by their root shape: While any carrot can be harvested before reaching its full size as a more tender "baby" carrot, some fast-maturing cultivars have been bred to produce smaller roots. The most extreme examples produce round roots about 2.5 centimetres (1 in) in diameter. These small cultivars are also more tolerant of heavy or stony soil than long-rooted cultivars such as 'Nantes' or 'Imperator'. The "baby carrots" sold ready-to-eat in supermarkets are, however, often not from a smaller cultivar of carrot, but are simply full-sized carrots that have been sliced and peeled to make carrot sticks of a uniform shape and size. Carrot flowers are pollinated primarily by bees. Seed growers use honeybees or mason bees for their pollination needs. Carrots are used as food plants by the larvae of some Lepidoptera species, including Common Swift, Garden Dart, Ghost Moth, Large Yellow Underwing and Setaceous Hebrew Character. Novelty carrots. Food enthusiasts and researchers have developed other varieties of carrots through traditional breeding methods. Novelty carrots are also grown throughout Western Europe in flower pots and are noted for their distinctly minty flavour. One particular variety lacks the usual orange pigment from carotenes, owing its white colour to a recessive gene for tocopherol (Vitamin E). Derived from "Daucus carota" L. and patented (US patent #6,437,222) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the variety is intended to supplement the dietary intake of Vitamin E. Production trends. In 2005, China was the largest producer of carrots and turnips, according to the FAO. China accounted for at least one third of the global output, followed by Russia and the United States. In 2005, a poll of 2,000 people revealed that the carrot was Britain's third favourite culinary vegetable.

spoon	carrot
top 10 words in brain distribution (in article): steel head cut handle metal type shape form hammer edge	top 10 words in brain distribution (in article): plant fruit produce drink grow seed species sugar leaf flower
top 10 words in brain distribution (not in article): iron blade cell hair tool design size hand nail whip	top 10 words in brain distribution (not in article): light lamp water wine beer animal tree bottle contain time
times more probable under spoon 30 20 10 6 4 2.5 1.25 1 1.25 2.5 4 6 10 20 30 times more probable under carrot (words not in the model)
A spoon'" is a utensil consisting of a small shallow bowl, oval or round, at the end of a handle. A type of cutlery (usually called flatware in the United States), especially as part of a place setting, it is used primarily for serving and eating liquid or semisolid food (sometimes called "spoon-meat"), and solid foods such as rice and cereal which cannot easily be lifted with a fork. Spoons are also used in food preparation to measure, mix, stir and toss ingredients. They can be made from metal (notably flat silver or silverware, plated or solid), wood or plastic. Abbreviation: sp. History. The earliest northern European spoon would seem to have been a chip or splinter of wood; Greek references point to the early and natural use of shells, such as those that are still used by primitive peoples. Ancient Indian texts also refer to the use of spoons. For example, the Rigveda refers to spoons during a passage describing the reflection of light as it "touches the spoon's mouth" (RV 8.43.10). Preserved examples of various forms of spoons used by the ancient Egyptians include those composed of ivory, flint, slate and wood; many of them carved with religious symbols. The spoons of the Greeks and Romans were chiefly made of bronze and silver and the handle usually takes the form of a spike or pointed stem. There are many examples in the British Museum from which the forms of the various types can be ascertained, the chief points of difference being found in the junction of the bowl with the handle. Middle Ages spoons at Chillon Castel Medieval spoons for domestic use were commonly made of cow horn or wood, but brass, pewter, and latten spoons appear to have been common in about the 15th century. The full descriptions and entries relating to silver spoons in the inventories of the royal and other households point to their special value and rarity. The earliest English reference appears to be in a will of 1259. In the wardrobe accounts of Edward I for the year 1300 some gold and silver spoons marked with the "fleur-de-lis", the Paris mark, are mentioned. One of the most interesting medieval spoons is the coronation spoon used in the anointing of the English sovereign. The sets of Apostle Spoons, popular as christening presents in Tudor times, the handles of which terminate in heads or busts of the apostles, are a special form to which antiquarian interest attaches. The earlier English spoon-handles terminate in an acorn, plain knob or a diamond; at the end of the 16th century, the baluster and seal ending becomes common, the bowl being fig-shaped. During The Restoration, the handle becomes broad and flat, the bowl is broad and oval and the termination is cut into the shape known as the hind's foot. In the first quarter of the 18th century, the bowl becomes narrow and elliptical, with a tongue or rat's tail down the back, and the handle is turned up at the end. The modern form, with the tip of the bowl narrower than the base and the rounded end of the handle turned down, came into use about 1760. Types and uses. Spoons are used primarily for eating liquid or semi-liquid foods, such as soup, stew or ice cream, and very small or powdery solid items which cannot be easily lifted with a fork, such as rice, sugar, cereals and green peas. In Southeast Asia, spoons are the primary utensil used for eating; forks are used only to push food onto the spoon. Spoons are also widely used in cooking and serving. In baking, batter is usually thin enough to pour or drop from a spoon; a mixture of such consistency is sometimes called "drop batter”. Rolled dough dropped from a spoon to a cookie sheet can be made into rock cakes and other cookies, while johnnycake may be prepared by dropping spoonfuls of cornmeal onto a hot greased griddle. A spoon is similarly useful in processing jelly, sugar and syrup. A test sample of jelly taken from a boiling mass may be allowed to slip from a spoon in a sheet, in a step called "sheeting". At the "crack" stage, syrup from boiling sugar may be dripped from a spoon, causing it to break with a snap when chilled. When boiled to 240°F. and poured from a spoon, sugar forms a filament, or "thread". Hot syrup is said to "pearl" when it forms such a long thread without breaking when dropped from a spoon. Used for stirring, a spoon is passed through a substance with a continued circular movement for the purpose of mixing, blending, dissolving, cooling, or preventing sticking of the ingredients. Mixed drinks may be "muddled" by working a spoon to crush and mix ingredients such as mint and sugar on the bottom of a glass or mixer. Spoons are employed for mixing certain kinds of powder into water to make a sweet or nutritious drink. A spoon may also be employed to toss ingredients by mixing them lightly until they are well coated with a dressing. A spoonful'"—the amount of material a spoon contains or can contain—is used as a standard unit of measure for volume in cooking, where it normally signifies a "'teaspoonful'". It is abbreviated "coch" or "cochl", from Latin "cochleare". "Teaspoonful" is often used in a similar way to describe the dosage for over the counter medicines. Dessert spoonful and tablespoonful may also be found in drink and food recipes. A teaspoon holds about 5ml and a tablespoon about 15ml. For storage, spoons and knives were sometimes placed in paired "knife boxes", which were often ornate wooden containers with sloping top, used especially during the 18th century. On the table, an ornamental utensil called a "nef", shaped like a ship, might hold a napkin, knife and spoon. The souvenir spoon generally exists solely as a decorative object commemorating an event, place, or special date. Spoons can also be used as a musical instrument. To "spoon-feed" oneself or another can simply mean to feed by means of a spoon. Metaphorically, however, it often means to present something to a person or group so thoroughly or wholeheartedly as to preclude the need of independent thought, initiative or self-reliance on the part of the recipient; or to present information in a slanted version, with the intent to preclude questioning or revision. Someone who accepts passively what has been offered in this way is said to have been spoon-fed. Manufacture. For machine-made spoons, the basic shape is cut out from a sheet of sterling silver, nickel silver alloy or stainless steel. The bowl is cross rolled between two pressurized rollers to produce a thinner section. The handle section is also rolled to produce the width needed for the top end. The blank is then cropped to the required shape, and two dies are used to apply the pattern to the blank. The fash is then removed using a lynisher, and the bowl is formed between two dies and bent. To make a spoon the traditional by way of handforging, a bar of silver is marked up to the correct proportions for the bowl and handle. It is then heated until red hot and held in tongs and using the hammer and anvil, beaten into shape. The tip of the bar is pointed to form the tip of the bowl, then hammered to form the bowl. If a heel is to be added, a section down the centre is left thicker. The edges of the bowl and the tip of the spoon are left thicker as this is where most of the thickness is needed. The handle is then started and hammered out to length going from thick at the neck and gradually tapering down in thickness giving a balanced feel. During this process the piece becomes very hard and has to be annealed several times, then worked again until the final shape is achieved. The bowl is filed to shape, often using a metal template. The bowl is then formed using a tin cake and spoon	The carrot'" ("Daucus carota" subsp. "sativus", Etymology: Middle French "carotte", from Late Latin "carōta", from Greek "karōton", originally from the Indoeuropean root "ker-" (horn), due to its horn-like shape) is a root vegetable, usually orange or white, or red-white blend in colour, with a crisp texture when fresh. The edible part of a carrot is a taproot. It is a domesticated form of the wild carrot "Daucus carota", native to Europe and southwestern Asia. It has been bred for its greatly enlarged and more palatable, less woody-textured edible taproot, but is still the same species. It is a biennial plant which grows a rosette of leaves in the spring and summer, while building up the stout taproot, which stores large amounts of sugars for the plant to flower in the second year. The flowering stem grows to about 1 metre (3 ft) tall, with an umbel of white flowers that produce a fruit called a mericarp by botanists, which is a type of schizocarp. Uses and nutrition. Carrots can be eaten in a variety of ways. The simplest way is raw as carrots are perfectly digestible without requiring cooking. Alternatively they may be chopped and boiled, fried or steamed, and cooked in soups and stews, as well as baby and pet foods. A well known dish is "carrots julienne". Grated carrots are used in carrot cakes, as well as carrot puddings, an old English dish thought to have originated in the early 1800s. The greens are edible as a leaf vegetable, but are rarely eaten by humans, as they are mildly toxic. Together with onion and celery, carrots are one of the primary vegetables used in a "mirepoix" to make various broths. Ever since the late 1980s, baby carrots or mini-carrots (carrots that have been peeled and cut into uniform cylinders) have been a popular ready-to-eat snack food available in many supermarkets. Carrot juice is also widely marketed, especially as a health drink, either stand-alone or blended with fruits and other vegetables. The carrot gets its characteristic and bright orange colour from β-carotene, which is metabolised into vitamin A in humans when bile salts are present in the intestines. Massive overconsumption of carrots can cause hypercarotenemia, a condition in which the skin turns orange (although hypercarotenemia is not itself dangerous unlike overdose of vitamin A, which can cause liver damage). Carrots are also rich in dietary fibre, antioxidants, and minerals. Lack of Vitamin A can cause poor vision, including night vision, and vision can be restored by adding Vitamin A back into the diet. The urban legend that says eating large amounts of carrots will allow one to see in the dark developed from stories of British gunners in World War II who were able to shoot down German planes in the darkness of night. The legend arose during the Battle of Britain when the RAF circulated a story about their pilots' carrot consumption as an attempt to cover up the discovery and effective use of radar technologies in engaging enemy planes. It reinforced existing German folklore and helped to encourage Britons—looking to improve their night vision during the blackouts—to grow and eat the vegetable. Ethnomedically, the roots are used to treat digestive problems, intestinal parasites, and tonsillitis or constipation. History. The wild ancestors of the carrot are likely to have come from Afghanistan, which remains the centre of diversity of "D. carota", the wild carrot. Selective breeding over the centuries of a naturally-occurring subspecies of the wild carrot, "Daucus carota" subsp. "sativus" reducing bitterness, increasing sweetness and minimizing the woody core, has produced the familiar garden vegetable. In early use, carrots were grown for their aromatic leaves and seeds, not their roots. Some relatives of the carrot are still grown for these, such as parsley, fennel, dill and cumin. The first mention of the root in classical sources is in the 1st century CE. The modern carrot appears to have been introduced to Europe in the 8-10th centuries; Ibn al-Awam, in Andalusia, describes both red and yellow carrots; Simeon Seth also mentions both colours in the 11th century. Orange-coloured carrots appeared in the Netherlands in the 17th century. These, the modern carrots, were intended by the antiquary John Aubrey (1626-1697) when he noted in his memoranda "Carrots were first sown at Beckington in Somersetshire Some very old Man there [in 1668] did remember their first bringing hither." In addition to wild carrot, these alternative (mostly historical) names are recorded for "Daucus carota": Bee's-nest, Bee's-nest plant, Bird's-nest, Bird's-nest plant, Bird's-nest root, Carota, Carotte (French), Carrot, Common carrot, Crow's-nest, Daucon, Dawke, Devil's-plague, Fiddle, Gallicam, Garden carrot, Gelbe Rübe (German), Gingidium, Hill-trot, Laceflower, Mirrot, Möhre (German), Parsnip (misapplied), Queen Anne's lace, Rantipole, Staphylinos, and Zanahoria. The parsnip is a close relative of the carrot, as is parsley. Cultivars. Carrot cultivars can be grouped into two broad classes, eastern carrots'" and "'western carrots'". More recently, a number of novelty cultivars have been bred for particular characteristics. The world's largest carrot was grown in Palmer, Alaska by John Evans in 1998, weighing 8.6 kg (19 lb). The city of Holtville, California promotes itself as "Carrot Capital of the World", and holds an annual festival devoted entirely to the carrot. Eastern carrots. Eastern carrots were domesticated in Central Asia, probably in modern-day Afghanistan in the 10th century, or possibly earlier. Specimens of the eastern carrot that survive to the present day are commonly purple or yellow, and often have branched roots. The purple colour common in these carrots comes from anthocyanin pigments. Western carrots. The western carrot emerged in the Netherlands in the 17th century, its orange colour making it popular in those countries as an emblem of the House of Orange and the struggle for Dutch independence. The orange colour results from abundant carotenes in these cultivars. While orange carrots are the norm in the West, other colours do exist, including white, yellow, red, and purple. These other colours of carrot are raised primarily as novelty crops. The Vegetable Improvement Center at Texas A&M University has developed a purple-skinned, orange-fleshed carrot, the "BetaSweet" (also known as the Maroon Carrot), with substances to prevent cancer, which has recently entered very limited commercial distribution, through J&D Produce of Edinburg TX. This variety of carrot is also known to be high in β-carotene which is an essential nutrient. The high concentrations of this nutrient give the carrot its maroon shade. Western carrot cultivars are commonly classified by their root shape: While any carrot can be harvested before reaching its full size as a more tender "baby" carrot, some fast-maturing cultivars have been bred to produce smaller roots. The most extreme examples produce round roots about 2.5 centimetres (1 in) in diameter. These small cultivars are also more tolerant of heavy or stony soil than long-rooted cultivars such as 'Nantes' or 'Imperator'. The "baby carrots" sold ready-to-eat in supermarkets are, however, often not from a smaller cultivar of carrot, but are simply full-sized carrots that have been sliced and peeled to make carrot sticks of a uniform shape and size. Carrot flowers are pollinated primarily by bees. Seed growers use honeybees or mason bees for their pollination needs. Carrots are used as food plants by the larvae of some Lepidoptera species, including Common Swift, Garden Dart, Ghost Moth, Large Yellow Underwing and Setaceous Hebrew Character. Novelty carrots. Food enthusiasts and researchers have developed other varieties of carrots through traditional breeding methods. Novelty carrots are also grown throughout Western Europe in flower pots and are noted for their distinctly minty flavour. One particular variety lacks the usual orange pigment from carotenes, owing its white colour to a recessive gene for tocopherol (Vitamin E). Derived from "Daucus carota" L. and patented (US patent #6,437,222) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the variety is intended to supplement the dietary intake of Vitamin E. Production trends. In 2005, China was the largest producer of carrots and turnips, according to the FAO. China accounted for at least one third of the global output, followed by Russia and the United States. In 2005, a poll of 2,000 people revealed that the carrot was Britain's third favourite culinary vegetable.