造型怪異的蔬菜（組圖）zt

英夫婦種出酷似鴨子的西葫蘆

Freaky fruit and vile vegetables: mother nature's freaks of nature

To make nature's wonders just that little bit more wonderful, man's helping hand may be required. For example, Gao Xianzhang of Hexia, northern China, has spent six years developing bizarre baby-shaped pears, carefully crafting each one inside an individual mould as it grows...

...Locals snap them up, despite the hefty £5 price tag. Now Gao is planning to export the pear-babies to the UK and the rest of Europe

Watermelons seem to be a popular choice for novelty adaptation, Japan is home to the square watermelon...

...watermelon hearts...

...and even watermelon faces

Stickers placed on apples as they ripened created these Apple Mac apples. They were made by an apple-grower, and major Mac fan, in Fuji, Japan

Cucumbers grown in moulds, shaped like hearts and stars, add a little extra sparkle and love to an ordinary salad

Often though, mother nature will do her own experimenting on her healthy snacks. These bizarre creations all brought a smile to our faces...

...not least this little fellow with a smile of his own

A duck-shaped cucumber found in Skegness, Lincolnshire

A snake-shaped marrow found in Montreal, Canada

A tomato with a phallus-shaped growth, which was grown by George Findlay of Essex

A devilish tomato with horns, grown by a Bury pensioner, in Lancashire

Farmer Ernie Crouch (73) from Tasmania, Australia, with his potato man Tassie Tater

A cuddling carrot found in a Plymouth garden

A potato shaped like Sooty the bear, found by Michael Audus in Cambridge. Mr Audus decided not to eat it

A sweet potato that bares a resemblance to a rat

A heart-shaped potato, found in a sack of potatoes, in Wales

A heart shaped potato found in a sack of potatoes, discovered by staff at K's cafe in Wales

A rabbit-shaped ginger root

Tomato shaped like a rabbit, grown by David and Audrey Maber in Gosport, Hampshire

Then there's those vegetables that could feed an army. Farmer Simon Goldsworthy, 23, from Hayle in Cornwall, produced the largest pumpkin at the annual Bath and West Gardening Show - at 304kg...

...Amateur horticulturalist Ian Neale, 66, shattered the world record with a pair of super-sized swedes, each weighing 37kg. The previous record was 34kg

...Other scale-busting produce on show included carrots, beetroot and cabbages. Stacey Humphries poses between two huge cabbages

...A young boy with a giant cucumber, grown in Petah Tikva, Israel

And, of course, the ones from the opposite end of the spectrum. Here are some miniature versions of Parisienne carrots, placed next to ordinary-sized carrots

But mother nature doesn't just experiment with shape and size, sometimes a fruit's colour or veg's pigmentation is the root of its weirdness, like these red bananas - a rare breed from Colombia

The Purple Jewel sweet potato, which has an overwhelming creamy and nutty taste, are grown in volcanic ash in Hawaii

Purple betasweet carrots, farmed as Islehah by Tomsett Burgess growers

Some people believe that a creator is present in all things, well this aubergine might agree. A Hindu symbol was discovered within it. The symbol, AUM, is the most sacred sound in the Hindu religion and is considered the root of the universe and everything that exists

You've got to hand it to Mother Nature as gardener digs up five-fingered carrot

A gardener got his own unique five-a-day in one go after digging up a hand-shaped carrot complete with five fingers.

The bizarre 'carrot claw' was grown by Peter Jackson, 66, in the garden of his home in Shropshire.

But Peter thought nothing more of the wacky-shaped vegetable and merely took a picture before proceeding to cook it, much to surprise of his daughter Lindsay.

 

Hands up for the carrot. The five-fingered vegetable which was grown in Shropshire

 

Lindsay, 42, a chef from Condover, Shropshire, joked whether the hand might count as all of her 'five a day' in one go.  

She said: 'We couldn't believe it, it was quite a shock to see a carrot perfectly shaped like a hand.  

'You'd think that with me being a chef and my dad a gardener, we might have come across something this strange before - but we never have.  

'My dad just seemed to make some joke about it being 'handy', took a picture and then I think they just ate it. He played it all down, but that's just the way dad is.

"We've not had anything weird since - no arms or legs to go with it. I don't think his garden is trying to build a carrot man. Now that would really be unusual. 

'It was just one of those one-off freak of nature occurrences - but isn't it funny?' 

Peter, who is a semi-retired gardener, has three vegetable plots in his large garden, in a leafy part of Shropshire.

He said that throughout his years of gardening, he had never seen anything quite like his 'carrot claw'. 

Other oddly-shaped veg to hit the headlines over the years include baby-shaped pears, a parsnip that looked like a witch and a potato teddy bear. Earlier this week a gardener cut open a Jalapeno pepper to see a smiley face, complete with eyebrows, looking back at him.

 

The Jalapeno pepper which when cut open revealed a smiling face