November 2017

DIET
FLORIDA’S
EXOTIC FRUITS
by Cynthia MacGregor
LYCHEE
Have you ever eaten a
cherimoya? Jakfruit (also
spelled “jackfruit”)?
Sapodilla?
South Florida home gardeners are
fortunate. While there are some
flowers, plants, and trees that will
grow only in more temperate climates,
there are quite a number that will grow
here, in the subtropics. Among these are
some that are classified as either “rare or
exotic fruits.”
So what are some of these less well
known fruits? The spiky jakfruit, which
tastes like Juicyfruit gum, is the largest
tree-borne fruit in the world. In India,
one jakfruit can weigh as much as 150
pounds, although here the most one is
likely to weigh is 80 pounds.
Lychees are red, heart
shaped, very sweet, and are
one of the oldest fruits in
the world.
They have existed in China for about
3,000 years. Formerly erroneously
called “lychee nuts,” they used to be a
staple of Chinese restaurant dining. The
misnomer came about because, before
refrigeration, they were dried out in the
sun, which made the fruit rattle around
inside the shell, sounding like a nut or
seed. Longans, similar to lychees, are
a brown fruit native to India, with clear,
translucent flesh.
Sapodillas are beginning to make their
way into local grocery stores and are
particularly popular with people from the
Caribbean. They taste like brown sugar,
are brown on the outside, and used to be
88
SAPODILLA
baseball shaped but now are more egg
shaped. The sap of the sapodilla tree is
the source of chicle, from which chewing
gum is made. Thomas Adams, from New
York City, invented Chiclets chewing gum,
made from chicle.
The jaboticaba, from Brazil, tastes like a
muscadine grape and is about the size
of a quarter. The miracle fruit, a little red
berry, is now being used in hospitals for
people undergoing chemotherapy. Just
roll it around on your tongue without
swallowing, and for the next hour
everything you eat tastes sweet. In this
way it counteracts the affect of chemo
on the taste buds. Also known
as “miracle berry,” it is native to
Ghana and can even grow in a
condo, in a small pot.
The sugar apple, a knobby fruit
the size of a baseball, is red or
green on the outside, and the
custard apple, related to the sugar
apple, is red outside and softball
sized.
There are more than 50 varieties
of bananas, including the Java
NOVEMBER 2017
blue or ice cream banana, which is blue
outside but white on the inside, where it
looks like ice cream.
You can grow some of these fruits from
seeds, although they will take a long time
before they begin to bear fruit, or you can
buy a young tree or bush, as the case
may be. Avocados and mangos should
be grafted for best results.
To learn more, attend a meeting of your
local group, where there is usually an
informative speaker, or listen to Mark
Benson’s The South Florida Garden
Show on 880 AM radio on Sunday
mornings from 7 to 9am.
In Broward, the Fruit and Vegetable
Society of Broward County meets on
a big property on Griffin Road, west of
I-75. The Tropical Fruit Society of the
Redlands, in the Homestead area, meets
at the Miami Dade Fruit and Spice Park.
The Palm Beach County group meets in
the auditorium of the Mounts Botanical
Garden at 531 N. Military Trail in West
Palm Beach, on the second Friday of
every month, at 7:30pm. P
MIRACLE FRUIT