![]() Otabeite apple season in Jamaica and February through April. It feels and tastes more like a pear with a light, spongy flesh. While it looks somewhat like an apple with a red skin, it is more like a pear shaped fruit. Be sure to spit out the bitter seed.įrom the South Pacific islands, Otaheite (pronounced O-Tahiti) apple is also called Malay rose apple, mountain apple, coco plum and Ethiopia apple. To eat cacao you simply take one of its pods and suck on the outside flesh. The fruit is sweet and tangy before its roasted and processed for chocolate The cacao fruit pod holds beans but they taste nothing like chocolate. I first learned this staying with the Bribri indigenous people when they shared typical Costa Rican fruit.īefore that I’m not sure how I thought chocolate was made as I had only ever seen cacao nibs. If you’ve never visited a chocolate producing region, you may not have realized that chocolate is actually a fruit! It looks like an orange but is a bit more flat, with thicker skin and often juicier. The name is derived from the words “orange, tangerine and unique”. This citrus fruit was developed in Jamaica, a cross between an orange and a tangerine. The name ortanique is also created from orange, tangerine and also unique. ![]() The name tangor is tang from tangerine and or from orange. It is a cross between a mandarin orange and sweet orange. Want to strike up a conversation with locals, ask them what the best Jamaican mango is!Įveryone has a different opinion and some people passionately debate why their beloved mango variety is best.Īlso known as tangor, this is a Jamaican fruit hybrid from Manchester. This list is getting so long but there are more Jamaican mango names! Come see aka sweetie, sweetie come brush me.Black aka black sweety, blackie, dunkell,green gauge, kidney.But mangoes are considered a local Jamaican fruit. It is believed that mangoes originated in India, from over 4000 years ago. And wherever I am, whenever I eat a naseberry, I remember how I saved a tree from Hurricane Gilbert and an over-enthusiastic gardener at Roots Cottage.Mango is absolutely one of the most consumed Jamaican fruits, locals love them.Īnd unlike what we have imported, there isn’t just the yellow or green type of mango – they are SO many types of Jamaican mangoes. I get a great deal of satisfaction every time I eat one of its fruits. When next you are at Silver Sands, take a walk to the northwesterly end of the property and on the boundary of Roots Cottage and Endless Summer you will see a strong healthy tree which bears fruit generously. Today that naseberry tree towers over the Endless Summer driveway some fifteen feet high, having survived a few more storms that have passed through the region. He then recovered the roots with soil and staked and tied it firmly so it would not fall over in a gust of wind. I started pushing it back up, and the gardener helped me straighten it up. I quickly stepped over to Roots Cottage and I told him that we could save that tree. As the gardener raised his machete over the naseberry tree, I shouted to him to stop. It’s so sweet that the late Forbes Burnham, former Prime Minister of Guyana, once exclaimed that “only a woman is sweeter than the sapodilla”!Īnyway, back to my story. Discard the seeds and pop the juicy flesh into your mouth. ![]() ![]() Some people eat the skin but I find it a bit rough. The ripe fruit softens, and you simply break it open with the fingers to reveal a light brown to rust-coloured flesh with shiny black seeds. Naseberries are picked when mature and ripened off the tree. They are in season now (March), so if you are there, ask your housekeeper or cook or driver to get you some naseberries. I won’t be surprised if most people reading this have never heard of naseberries, even if they have visited Silver Sands Jamaica many times. But whether you call it naseberry, sapodilla, or chikoo (Manilkara zapota), I just can’t get enough of these sweet fleshy fruits that are not very common in the Western World. When I visited India, it was served to me as chikoo. In my early childhood years, I knew this fruit as the sapodilla as that is what it is called in Trinidad. I should perhaps pause my narrative here to tell you that I just love naseberries. When the Roots Cottage gardener came to work, I happened to be on the driveway at Endless Summer as he approached the tree with his machete in hand, ready to finish off what the hurricane started. This naseberry tree was then only a few feet high and Gilbert had toppled it over too. Hurricane Gilbert left many trees uprooted, lying helplessly on their sides. There are many “Gilbert Stories” to be told, but this one is about the naseberry tree at Roots Cottage near the driveway entrance to Endless Summer. When Hurricane Gilbert ploughed through Jamaica in 1988, I was fortunate to be staying at Silver Sands where I was consequently stranded for several days.
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