My guess: like a date.

I wonder what its format was like.

My guess: ISO-8601.

Why, it's using Roman numerals of course ;)

ab urbe condita MMDCCLXXIII

> My guess: like a date.

That may depend on how "domesticated" the date is, although I suppose your statement could be in strict conformance with the Law of Identity.

Other domesticated fruits and vegetables are nothing like the wild version of the same. Notable examples include apples and tomatoes (the latter of which originated in South America - image Italy with no red sauce?).

While I accept wide variance between wild and cultivated (and even between cultivated varieties) I feel confident that this date would taste more like a generic "date" than, say, a raisin, melon or squash.

How do wild Apple and tomatoes look and taste?

All over the place. Really a grab bag of genetic material that subsequently creates a huge range of variation. Apples in particular demonstrate this. Every Fall I spend a couple weekends harvesting feral apples at an abandoned township near where I live (for pressing into cider). Every tree is unique and highly variable. Modern eating apples are always reproduced through grafting, whereas apples that have gone feral are all over the map (and they will readily mate with pears, making it even more complex).

I'm seriously considering doing some grafting myself this year. The place I go has probably 1000+ trees spread out over a couple hundred acres. There is a huge range of variation in terms of flavor. But my favorite ones for making cider are the pips (small, when fullsize, maybe the size of an oblong plumb). They make by far the best cider.

Interesting fact: Johnny Appleseed spread apple trees by planting seeds rather than grafting. So the apples he left behind weren't good for much except making hard cider.

https://priceonomics.com/the-johnny-appleseed-business-model...