What kind of fruit is this?

Carpy · July 2018

Any one know what kind of fruit this is? We originally thought loquat but the seeds are way closer to lemon seeds. Taste is tart and herbaceous and the skin is thin with flesh like an apricot. They were growing out of a tall bush at my local community college's garden. We're in socal if that helps.

Donnicton · July 2018

Power to you if you ate it before you knew what it was... Is the skin smooth or fuzzy, and does it have multiple seeds per fruit or just one?

Carpy · July 2018

Skin is smooth and multiple seeds. I counted 4 with maybe another underdeveloped one.

Cambiata · July 2018

Man that's really confusing. It certainly doesn't look like a citrus fruit, it doesn't have the thicker skin or the sectioning you'd expect. Is there a pit/stone in the center AND smaller seeds? Or only smaller seeds? I ask because there appears to be a hollow in the center of the fruit you have photographed where you'd expect the stone to be.

Edit: Maybe a Saijo persimmon?

(if it is a Saijo persimmon, it's probably underripe)

Cambiata · July 2018

From the outside it looks kinda-sorta like a yellow tamarillo, which is said to have a lemony taste, but the seeds inside those are not lemon-like, but tomato like.

I've been searching one of my favorite Youtube channels, Weird Fruit Explorer to see if I can find a match and here's his discussion of tamarillos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRR_W1MD0tk

Carpy · July 2018

It's only the smaller seeds. The hollow is actually a white membrane that extends from the stem and surrounds the seeds.

Underripe persimmon might be it, the seeds definitely seem similar. They came from a well tended bush in a garden designed for students to wander in and pick fruit so maybe tracking down a grounds keeper will solve it.

Carpy · July 2018

That's a fun video but the insides of this one definitely don't look anything like the tamarillo.

Cambiata · July 2018

Ok, based on your description of the seeds, sounds like it could be Mexican hawthorn.

Here's the Weird Fruit Explorer video on that one for a flavor description (as well as what you can do with it, if you have a mind towards cooking):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajGBze4hNyU

Burtletoy · July 2018

Carpy wrote: »

Any one know what kind of fruit this is? We originally thought loquat but the seeds are way closer to lemon seeds. Taste is tart and herbaceous and the skin is thin with flesh like an apricot. They were growing out of a tall bush at my local community college's garden. We're in socal if that helps.

Is there someone at the local community college that works on the garden you could ask?

ceres · July 2018

If it were an unripened persimmon you'd STILL be trying to rinse your mouth out.

Fuzzy Cumulonimbus Cloud · August 2018

I have spent two obsessive hours on this and read way more than I ever planned to read about fruit anatomy.

My biggest concern is your use of the word bush. Based on the picture, it is most similar to a true berry but none of the most common edible berries come from bushes. They all come from trees.

It is a rando true orange berry if it came from a bush. A cross section of the berry would also show nicely if it is a persimmon.

Penny Arcade

Quick Links

What kind of fruit is this?

Posts