Why Carrots are Orange?

Carrots in ancient times used to be white, yellow or purple.

The orange carrot is a relatively recent phenomenon. Dutch growers bred the orange carrot in the 1500's to be sweeter and less bitter than the yellow varieties. They were trying to "nationalize" the carrot by cross-breeding yellow carrots with the purple variety.

All of this was done to impress the House of Orange which returned the honor by adopting the carrot as the Royal vegetable.

This sweet orange carrot is now the dominant species across the globe although one does run into the other kinds in farmers' markets.