From The Food Encyclopedia by Jacques Rolland and Carol Sherman
Also Chinese gooseberry. This sour, egg-size, brown fruit, Actinidia chinensis, has hairy skin, lime green pulp and tiny black seeds, and is available from midsummer to winter. In the courts of the great khans of southern China, they called it yang tao and held it in high esteem. In the 19th century, the British cultivated it under the name "Chinese gooseberry", having brought the fruit vines to New Zealand, where they tried to sell it, unsuccessfully, under that name. In the late 1960s, the fruit was named after New Zealand's native bird, the apteryx, whose nickname was "kiwi", but only after considering the following names: monkey peach, sheep peach, yang tao and Ichang gooseberry. An American GI stationed Down Under during the Second World War grew fond of the fuzzy brown fruit and took it back with him to the U.S., and it wasn't long before kiwifruit became a major crop for California, and now Florida and Texas as well. Modern yellow varieties have recently been marketed in North America.
