What do Queen Beatrix and the humble carrot have in common? They're both orange! This simple Dutch children's joke has a surprisingly interesting royal history, starting with carrots that weren't orange, and a royal family that wasn't Dutch.

"How did carrots come to be orange? If you look at the history of the carrot, you see that at a certain point farmers started breeding orange carrots, and then the orange carrot became the dominant species."

So says Koert van Mensvoort, the director of Next Nature Network. He explains that carrots weren’t always orange. They were purple, white, brown, and yellow. Probably orange too, but this was not the dominant colour. Then, in the 1500s, along came some farmers in the northern Dutch town of Hoorn who, for one reason or another, seem to have preferred orange carrots. Through selective breeding, these farmers encouraged orange carrots to dominate the land.

Secretly orange
But why would the colour of his carrots be so important to a 16th-century Dutch farmer ?

"At the time, William of Orange [a German nobleman who founded the House of Orange-Nassau which later became the royal family of the Netherlands, ed.] was fighting for Dutch independence. The story goes that the breeders may have started with orange carrots as a secret way of showing support for William of Orange."

And secret it stayed. If these farmers were indeed motivated by their political affinity for the House of Orange, they did such a good job keeping it quiet that no one can prove if this was why they cultivated carrots of this colour.

Provocatively orange
On the other hand, there is some historical evidence that orange carrots were later restricted for political reasons. Historian Simon Schama writes in his book Patriots and Liberators that when the Dutch Patriots - a political faction of the time - were revolting against the House of Orange in the 18th century, they saw the vegetable as offensive. They said carrots sold with their roots "too conspicuously showing" were "provocative."

The World Carrot Museum website cites a similar negative reaction to the orange carrot. Dr T. Fernie writes that Republican-minded Dutch mayors banned carrots from being sold at market due to the aristocratic implications of their orange colour.

Patriotically orange
So, whether those those farmers in Hoorn began growing orange carrots for political reasons or not, the colour did eventually lead to an association with the House of Orange. And you don’t need to look very far to see that the colour orange occupies a special place in the hearts of Dutch people.

"In the Netherlands orange is a very special colour. If you come to this country on Queen’s Day, everything is orange. In the run-up to this holiday, lots of orange stuff is made and given away in supermarkets. That’s something that connects us as Dutch people."

These days, it’s hats, scarves, T-shirts and decorations. Who knows? Back in the 16th century, carrots may have served the same unifying - even patriotic - role.

(ae/imm)