Actinidia deliciosa Cultivation spread from China in the early 20th century when seeds were introduced to New Zealand by Isabel Fraser, the principal of Wanganui Girls' College, who had been visiting mission schools in China. The seeds were planted in 1906 by a Wanganui nurseryman, Alexander Allison, with the vines first fruiting in 1910. People who tasted the fruit thought it had a gooseberry flavour, so began to call it the Chinese gooseberry, but being from the genus "Actinidia", it is not related to the gooseberry family, Grossulariaceae. The familiar cultivar "Actinidia deliciosa" 'Hayward' was developed by Hayward Wright in Avondale, New
Gooseberry it was planted in gardens at a comparatively early period. William Turner describes the gooseberry in his "Herball", written about the middle of the 16th century, and a few years later it is mentioned in one of Thomas Tusser's quaint rhymes as an ordinary object of garden culture. Improved varieties were probably first raised by the skilful gardeners of Holland, whose name for the fruit, "Kruisbezie", may have been corrupted into the present English vernacular word. Towards the end of the 18th century the gooseberry became a favourite object of cottage-horticulture, especially in Lancashire, where the working cotton-spinners raised numerous