Autumn fruits

Abiu

A smooth, bright-yellow Amazonian fruit with clear, jelly-like flesh that tastes of caramel-vanilla custard — one of the gentlest and sweetest of the sapote family.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Acerola

A small, bright-red cherry-lookalike from the tropical Americas that packs one of the highest vitamin C concentrations of any fruit — the reason it fills supplement bottles worldwide.

Berry Summer Autumn

Acorn squash

The ribbed, acorn-shaped winter squash built for halving and roasting — deeply grooved skin that defeats a peeler, and a cavity that was clearly designed to hold butter and maple syrup.

Melon Autumn Winter

African breadfruit

A massive, spiky green fruit-head from West and Central Africa whose flesh is discarded — the treasure is the many seeds inside, boiled or roasted into a protein-rich staple dish, ukwa, beloved across Igbo Nigeria.

Tropical & subtropical Autumn Winter

Akebi

A purple sausage-shaped pod that splits open on its own when ripe, revealing translucent, mild-sweet pulp studded with black seeds. A nostalgic wild-forage fruit of northern Japan — and the rare case where the bitter rind is the real delicacy.

Berry Autumn

Ambarella

A crunchy tropical fruit with pineapple-mango tartness — eaten green and sour with salt, or ripe and sweet — hiding a spiky fibrous pit at its core.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

American persimmon

A small, wild North American persimmon that is mouth-puckeringly astringent until it's dead-ripe and soft — then turns into one of the sweetest fruits on the continent, tasting of dates, caramel, and brown sugar. The base of Midwestern persimmon pudding.

Tropical & subtropical Autumn

American plum

A small, wild red-to-yellow plum native across North America — tart-skinned and sweet-fleshed, thriving in thickets and prairies where it fed Indigenous peoples and settlers alike. Too tart-skinned for many raw, but the maker of superb wild-plum jelly.

Stone fruit Summer Autumn

Amla

The translucent green fruit at the heart of Ayurveda — so sour and astringent it makes water taste sweet afterward, and packed with unusually heat-stable vitamin C. India eats it pickled, candied, juiced, and as daily medicine.

Berry Autumn Winter

Apple

The world's most cultivated temperate fruit — crisp, sweet-tart, endlessly varied across 7,500+ cultivars, and the keeper of the cold-storage crown that puts it on shelves year-round.

Pome Autumn Year-round

Araçá

A wild Brazilian guava with a strawberry twist — small red or yellow fruit whose sweet-tart, aromatic pulp tastes of guava crossed with berries. Adored in southern Brazil's backyards and juice bars, and infamous elsewhere as an invasive escape artist.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Araticum

The custard-apple of Brazil's cerrado savanna — a large, rugged brown fruit with intensely sweet, aromatic yellow flesh. Strongly flavored and much loved in Minas Gerais, where marolo sweets and liqueurs celebrate the harvest.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Aronia

The berry that makes you pucker on purpose — America's native chokeberry, adopted at industrial scale by Poland, holds some of the highest polyphenol readings ever measured in fruit. Undrinkable straight, indispensable blended.

Berry Autumn

Asam gelugur

A large, ribbed, sour green-to-yellow fruit of the mangosteen family, grown in Malaysia and Thailand almost entirely to be sliced and sun-dried into a tangy souring agent — the tamarind of the Malay kitchen, giving fish curries their bright acidity.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Ash gourd

A giant, pale-green gourd coated in a chalky white wax that lets it keep for months — mild and cooling, made into winter-melon soup across East Asia and the translucent candy petha in India. A cucurbit valued as much for medicine and keeping as for flavor.

Melon Autumn Winter

Asian pear

The round, crisp, ultra-juicy pear of East Asia — eaten firm like an apple rather than soft like a European pear, refreshingly sweet and used as much for cooking and gifting as for snacking.

Pome Autumn

Atemoya

The engineered love-child of sugar-apple and cherimoya — created in Florida in 1908 and perfected in Taiwan and Australia. Custard-sweet with a pineapple tang, fewer seeds, and a hardier disposition than either famous parent.

Tropical & subtropical Autumn Winter

Autumn olive

A speckled red berry from a hardy East Asian shrub — sweet-tart, juicy, and extraordinarily rich in lycopene — that has become one of North America's most notorious invasive plants, making it a guilt-free forage the more you pick.

Berry Autumn

Azarole

A Mediterranean hawthorn bearing unusually large, apple-scented haws — sweet-tart little fruits eaten fresh or made into jam and jelly from Spain to the Levant, an old orchard fruit now grown mostly in gardens.

Pome Autumn

Bacaba

A tall Amazonian palm whose purple-black fruit yields a rich, oily, chocolate-brown drink — "bacaba wine" — much like açaí but milder and creamier. A cherished staple of the Brazilian Amazon, drunk sweetened with sugar and cassava flour.

Tropical & subtropical Autumn Winter

Bacuri

One of the Amazon's most prized flavors — a thick-skinned fruit whose fragrant, sweet-tart white pulp becomes some of Brazil's greatest ice cream and mousse. A relative of mangosteen, so loved in Pará that the pulp is priced like a delicacy.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Barberry

Tiny, jewel-red, intensely sour berries — the zereshk that studs Persian rice with bright, tangy sparks. A traditional European hedge fruit turned Iranian kitchen staple, usually dried.

Berry Autumn

Beach plum

A hardy wild plum of the North Atlantic dunes — small, tart, and purple-blue, thriving in sand and salt spray where little else fruits. The prized base of Cape Cod and New England beach-plum jelly.

Stone fruit Summer Autumn

Bell pepper

The chilli that forgot to be hot — a genetic quirk switched off its capsaicin, leaving a sweet, crunchy berry that is one of the richest common sources of vitamin C on earth, well ahead of any orange.

Berry Summer Autumn

Bignay

Long grape-like clusters of tiny berries that ripen unevenly from green to red to near-black — sour to sweet-tart on one string — famous across the Philippines as a wine and jam fruit.

Berry Summer Autumn

Biriba

An Amazonian custard-apple cousin whose soft, spiny yellow skin hides white flesh that tastes uncannily of lemon meringue pie — one of the sweetest, most delicate fruits of the tropics, and one of the most fragile.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Bitter kola

A West African seed chewed for its long bitter burn — nothing to do with true kola nut despite the name, and a fixture of Nigerian hospitality, ceremony and market stalls from Lagos to Douala.

Tropical & subtropical Autumn Winter

Black sapote

A green tomato-shaped persimmon relative whose ripe flesh turns glossy black and tastes uncannily like sweet chocolate pudding — a natural dessert with almost no fat.

Tropical & subtropical Winter Autumn

Blackberry

The hedgerow's free dessert — glossy, wine-dark aggregate berries that carry their core with them, deeper and more tannic than raspberries, and the anchor of crumbles and bramble jelly.

Berry Summer Autumn

Blue quandong

A startlingly bright-blue rainforest fruit from eastern Australia and the tropics — thin, tart-mild flesh over a large, intricately sculptured seed. A traditional Aboriginal food and cassowary favorite, more famous for its electric-blue color and its bead-like stones than its modest flavor.

Berry Autumn Winter

Bolwarra

A small, urn-shaped green fruit of an ancient Australian rainforest shrub — sweet, aromatic, and jelly-fleshed, tasting of guava and pear with a spicy note. A traditional Aboriginal food and a native bush-food flavoring, from one of the most primitive flowering-plant families on earth.

Berry Summer Autumn

Bottle gourd

Possibly the first plant humans ever domesticated — grown not for food but for the watertight container its dried shell makes. Eaten young it is one of the lightest vegetables there is; left to mature it becomes a bottle, a bowl or a sitar.

Melon Summer Autumn

Breadnut

The seeded, wild ancestor of the breadfruit — a spiny green globe packed with chestnut-like seeds that are boiled or roasted across the Caribbean and Pacific. Grown for its nutritious nuts rather than its starchy flesh.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Buddha's hand

A citron that grows in eerie finger-like segments, all fragrant rind and pith with almost no flesh or juice — grown for its powerful perfume, its zest, and its role as a ceremonial offering.

Citrus Winter Autumn

Buffaloberry

A tart, translucent-red berry of the North American plains and prairies — a hardy, nitrogen-fixing shrub whose sharp fruit sweetens after frost into jellies and sauces, and whose foaming relatives make the traditional "Indian ice cream."

Berry Summer Autumn

Burdekin plum

A flattened, purple-black Australian fruit that must be stored to soften before it's edible — then reveals tart-sweet, wine-dark flesh around a distinctive sculptured seed. A traditional Aboriginal food of the northern rainforests, made into jams and country wine.

Tropical & subtropical Autumn Winter

Buriti

The scaly red fruit of the towering moriche palm, one of the Amazon's most important wild foods — orange, oily flesh spectacularly rich in beta-carotene, eaten as sweets, drinks, and (as aguaje) a Peruvian street staple with a devoted following.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Bush tomato

A small desert fruit of central Australia that dries to a raisin right on the bush — intensely savory-sweet with caramel, tomato, and tamarillo notes. A cornerstone Aboriginal food, ground into a spice (akudjura) that's now a star of native Australian cooking.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Butternut squash

The sweetest and most reliable of the winter squashes — a pale tan, bell-shaped fruit with dense orange flesh, a small seed cavity and a keeping life measured in months. Bred in Massachusetts in the 1940s and now the default cooking squash worldwide.

Melon Autumn Winter

Calafate

A small, dark blue-purple berry of Patagonia — sweet-tart and richly flavored, gathered from thorny shrubs across the windswept south. Made into jams, ice cream, and pisco sours, and wrapped in the legend that whoever eats it will return to Patagonia.

Berry Summer Autumn

Cambuci

A green, flattened, flying-saucer-shaped fruit of Brazil's Atlantic forest — intensely sour and wildly aromatic, almost never eaten raw but transformed into some of São Paulo's most prized artisan juices, sorbets, and caipirinhas.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Canary melon

A striking bright-yellow, oval winter melon with smooth waxy skin and pale, faintly tangy flesh that tastes a little like a sweeter, softer pear. A long-keeping Mediterranean melon prized as much for its vivid color as its mild sweetness.

Melon Summer Autumn

Canistel

The "egg fruit" — bright yellow-orange flesh with the dense, dry, crumbly texture of hard-boiled egg yolk and a sweet custard-and-sweet-potato flavor.

Tropical & subtropical Winter Autumn

Cape gooseberry

A golden marble in a papery lantern husk — sweet-tart and tomatoey-tropical, eaten fresh as a fancy garnish, dried like a raisin, or cooked into jams across the Andes and beyond.

Berry Summer Autumn

Capulí

The Andean black cherry — small, dark, and sweet with a faintly almond-bitter finish, borne on a highland form of the American black cherry. A cherished dooryard fruit from Mexico through the Andes, eaten fresh and in drinks.

Stone fruit Summer Autumn

Carob

The long brown pod of a Mediterranean tree whose sweet, roasted pulp became the world's best-known chocolate substitute — naturally sweet, caffeine-free, and ancient, with seeds so uniform they gave us the "carat."

Tropical & subtropical Autumn

Casaba melon

A wrinkled, golden, teardrop-shaped winter melon with pale, mild, cucumber-sweet flesh and — unusually — almost no aroma. A long-keeping melon from Anatolia that ripens late and stores into winter, when other melons are long gone.

Melon Autumn

Cempedak

A smaller, softer, more intense jackfruit relative from Southeast Asia — deep golden segments with a durian-like richness and heady aroma, often battered and deep-fried whole.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Ceylon gooseberry

A small, velvety, deep-purple fruit from Sri Lanka and southern India — intensely sour and juicy, staining a vivid crimson, and made into some of the most brilliantly colored jams and drinks of the tropics. A close relative of the kei apple.

Berry Summer Autumn

Charichuelo

A ridged, warty yellow fruit of the Amazon and northern South America — a mangosteen relative whose translucent white pulp is sweet-tart and refreshing, tasting of citrus and lychee. A cherished dooryard fruit of Colombia and Peru, little known beyond.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Chayote

A pale-green, pear-shaped, wrinkled gourd from Mesoamerica — crisp, mild, and endlessly versatile, eaten as a fruit-vegetable across Latin America, Asia, and beyond. Its whole plant is edible, from the single soft seed to the shoots and starchy roots.

Melon Autumn Winter

Che

A knobbly red aggregate fruit from a thorny East Asian tree, tasting like a cross between watermelon, fig, and mulberry. A close mulberry cousin that ripens one fruit at a time deep into autumn — sweet, seedy, and almost unknown outside collectors' orchards.

Berry Autumn

Chequers

The small, russet-brown, speckled fruit of the wild service tree — hard and sour until bletted soft, then sweet, date-like, and spiced. A near-forgotten English hedgerow fruit once so beloved it named countless "Chequers" pubs.

Pome Autumn

Cherimoya

The Andean custard apple Mark Twain called "deliciousness itself" — green scaled skin over silky white flesh tasting of banana, pineapple, and vanilla custard.

Tropical & subtropical Autumn Winter

Chili pepper

The fruit that fights back — chilli's heat comes from capsaicin, a compound the plant evolved to deter mammals while letting birds spread its seeds. Humans, uniquely, decided the pain was the point.

Berry Summer Autumn

Chinese quince

A large, hard, intensely fragrant yellow fruit from East Asia — too woody and astringent to eat raw, but its powerful perfume scents rooms, its slices sweeten honeyed teas, and it's a classic remedy for coughs and sore throats.

Pome Autumn

Chokecherry

A wild North American cherry that grows in dense red-to-black clusters — astringent enough to "choke," but a cornerstone of Indigenous Plains food as syrup, jelly, and dried in pemmican and wojapi.

Stone fruit Summer Autumn

Chupa-chupa

A large Amazonian fruit in the cacao family whose brown-green rind peels to reveal sweet, fibrous, deep-orange flesh you suck off the seeds — a pumpkin-and-apricot flavor sold along the rivers of Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Citron

One of the three ancestral citrus, grown almost entirely for its thick fragrant rind rather than juice. Candied into succade, blessed at the Jewish festival of Sukkot, and prized around the Mediterranean for perfume more than flesh.

Citrus Autumn Winter

Clementine

The small, glossy, seedless mandarin hybrid that defines winter citrus in Europe and North America — sweeter and firmer-skinned than a satsuma, and sold by the crate through the holidays.

Citrus Autumn Winter

Cocoplum

A coastal fruit of the tropical Americas and West Africa — white, pink, or dark purple, with mild, cottony-sweet flesh around a large seed whose almond-like kernel is also eaten. A salt-tolerant dune plant made into a beloved candied preserve in Cuba and the Bahamas.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Concord grape

The intensely "grapey" blue-black American grape behind purple grape juice, jelly, and jam — a slip-skin fox grape with a bold, musky-sweet flavor utterly unlike a wine grape. Bred in Massachusetts in 1849 and the taste of American childhood.

Berry Autumn

Cornelian cherry

A dogwood that moonlights as an orchard tree — glossy scarlet fruit beloved from Istanbul to Kyiv for sherbets, preserves, and vodka. Ancient Greeks knew the wood for spears; the Caucasus knows the fruit for winter jars.

Stone fruit Summer Autumn

Crabapple

The small, hard, intensely tart ancestor of the eating apple — too sour to bite but loaded with pectin, making it the classic fruit for jelly, and a wild autumn staple across the Northern Hemisphere.

Pome Autumn

Cranberry

The bog berry that bounces — too tart to eat raw, essential once sweetened, and the only major fruit harvested by flooding fields into floating crimson seas. Thanksgiving's non-negotiable.

Berry Autumn

Crowberry

A small, glossy black berry of the far-northern tundra and moorland — mild, seedy, and watery, but abundant enough to have fed Arctic and subarctic peoples for millennia, from Iceland to Alaska.

Berry Autumn

Cupuacu

Cacao's Amazonian cousin — a heavy brown pod whose creamy white pulp tastes of chocolate crossed with tropical fruit, and whose seeds make a prized "cupulate" chocolate.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Dabai

A black, olive-like fruit of Sarawak in Borneo whose hard flesh softens in warm water into a rich, savory, avocado-like paste. Eaten with soy sauce and rice, it's a treasured local delicacy — the "Sibu olive" — that inspires seasonal devotion and steep prices.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Damson

A small, dark blue-black plum too tart and astringent to eat raw but transcendent cooked — the classic English hedgerow fruit for jam, damson gin, and deep-purple cheese. Autumn's most rewarding preserving plum.

Stone fruit Autumn

Date

The desert's candy and civilization's first sweetener — a palm fruit so energy-dense it fed caravans across empty quarters. Medjools eat like soft caramel; Deglet Noors like honeyed toffee.

Tropical & subtropical Autumn Year-round

Date-plum

A small, dark, grape-sized persimmon relative from the Caucasus and Asia, sweet and honeyed when fully soft — tasting, as its name says, of both date and plum. An ancient fruit thought to be the lotus of the legendary lotus-eaters.

Tropical & subtropical Autumn Winter

Davidson plum

A midnight-purple rainforest fruit that looks like a plum and bites like a lemon — Australia's sourest famous native, beloved by chefs for jams, sauces, and a color that dyes everything it touches a glorious magenta.

Stone fruit Summer Autumn

Doum palm fruit

The hard, shiny, reddish-brown fruit of the gingerbread palm — its dry fibrous rind tasting genuinely of gingerbread. An ancient food of the Nile and Sahel, soaked into a cooling drink and used as medicine, found even in the tomb of Tutankhamun.

Tropical & subtropical Autumn Winter

Dragon fruit

A neon-pink cactus fruit with kiwi-crunch seeds and gently sweet flesh — the night-blooming showpiece of tropical fruit stands and smoothie bowls alike.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Durian

Southeast Asia's infamous "King of Fruits" — a spiky armored shell hiding rich, custardy flesh whose aroma divides humanity into devotees and refusers.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Eggplant

A berry that behaves like a sponge — the aubergine's open, airy flesh soaks up oil and flavour like nothing else in the kitchen, which is both its great virtue and the reason it is so often cooked badly.

Berry Summer Autumn

Elderberry

Hedgerow clusters of tiny purple-black berries — too sharp and mildly toxic to eat raw, but cooked into cordials, syrups, and wines that anchor European folk medicine and midsummer tradition.

Berry Autumn Summer

Elephant apple

A hard, green, dodecagonal fruit whose edible part is really its swollen sepals — fibrous, apple-sour, and beloved in Assamese and Bengali kitchens for the tangy dal and pickle it makes. Wild elephants crack them open, hence the name.

Tropical & subtropical Autumn Winter

Feijoa

New Zealand's adopted obsession — an egg-shaped South American myrtle fruit tasting of pineapple, guava, and mint at once, scooped with a spoon and impossible to buy where it doesn't grow.

Tropical & subtropical Autumn

Fig

The inside-out flower of the ancient Mediterranean — jammy, honeyed, and seeded with a thousand crunchy achenes. Possibly the first plant humans ever cultivated, and still the taste of late summer.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Finger lime

An Australian rainforest citrus shaped like a stubby finger, filled with tiny juice pearls that burst like caviar — a native bushfood turned fine-dining garnish.

Citrus Autumn Winter

Gac

A spiky crimson Southeast Asian gourd-fruit, mild in taste but extraordinary in color — its red seed membranes are among the richest natural sources of lycopene and beta-carotene known.

Tropical & subtropical Winter Autumn

Giant granadilla

The biggest of all passionfruits — a melon-sized, four-angled fruit whose thick spongy rind is cooked as a vegetable while its perfumed pulp is spooned out and juiced. A tropical dooryard favorite from the Caribbean to Southeast Asia.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Gnetum

A curious Southeast Asian tree that is neither quite a fruit tree nor a nut tree — its red-when-ripe drupes and their seeds are boiled, fried, and above all pounded into emping, the bittersweet Indonesian crackers, while the young leaves go into soup.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Goji

The scarlet berry of Ningxia that China has simmered into soups and teas for two thousand years — and the West rebranded as a superfood. Almost always eaten dried, like a savory-sweet cranberry-raisin from the tomato family.

Berry Summer Autumn

Governor's plum

A small, dark-red to purple-black fruit from a thorny tropical tree — sweet-tart and juicy when fully ripe, astringent before, made into jams and jellies across Africa, Madagascar, and South Asia.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Grape

Humanity's most consequential fruit — eight thousand years of wine, raisins, and table grapes from one vine species. Modern breeding turned it into nature's candy; fermentation turned it into civilization's drink.

Berry Summer Autumn

Ground cherry

A small golden husk-fruit that drops to the ground when ripe — sweet and tropical-tasting, like a blend of pineapple, tomato, and vanilla. A cold-hardy annual cousin of the cape gooseberry, beloved by gardeners and pie-makers across temperate North America.

Berry Summer Autumn

Guabiju

A dark purple myrtle berry of southern South America — sweet, aromatic, and resinous, tasting of blueberry and pine with a hint of the tropics. A cherished wild fruit of the grassland forests of Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina, eaten fresh and made into liqueur.

Berry Summer Autumn

Guaraná

An Amazonian climbing vine whose red fruit splits to reveal a black seed in white flesh — looking uncannily like an eye. The caffeine-packed seed powers Brazil's national soft drink and the global energy-drink industry.

Tropical & subtropical Autumn

Guava

The tropics' perfume bomb — a humble green orb whose aroma fills rooms and whose vitamin C embarrasses citrus four times over. Eaten crunchy-green with salt in Asia, pink-ripe and fragrant in the Americas.

Tropical & subtropical Year-round Autumn

Hackberry

A tiny orange-brown berry of a common North American and Eurasian tree — a thin shell of sweet, date-like flesh over a crunchy edible seed, eaten whole. One of humanity's oldest foods, found in prehistoric campsites, and a crunchy sweet nibble hiding on city trees.

Berry Autumn Winter

Harpephyllum

A tart, red, oval fruit of a handsome South African tree in the mango family — sharp and juicy, made into a rosy jelly, jam, and country wine. A cherished indigenous fruit and street tree of the eastern coast, eaten ripe and prized for preserves.

Tropical & subtropical Autumn Winter

Hawthorn

The small red "haws" of the hawthorn hedge — mild, apple-like, and a little dry, made into jelly, ketchup, and country wine in Europe and into sweet snacks and digestive tonics across China.

Pome Autumn

Highbush cranberry

A tart, translucent-red berry of a northern shrub that mimics the true cranberry in look and use — but isn't related at all. Gathered across North America and Eurasia for jelly and sauce, and a beloved cultural symbol (kalyna) in Ukraine.

Berry Autumn

Honeydew

The quiet melon — smooth ivory skin, pale jade flesh, and a clean, honeyed sweetness without cantaloupe's musk. Underrated because usually underripe; transcendent when allowed to finish.

Melon Summer Autumn

Huckleberry

The wild, un-tamed cousin of the blueberry — small, intense, and gathered by hand from mountain slopes across the American West, where it resists cultivation and remains a jealously-guarded forager's (and grizzly bear's) prize.

Berry Summer Autumn

Ice cream bean

A legume that thinks it's dessert — foot-long pods lined with cottony white pulp that tastes of vanilla ice cream. Amazonian children's favorite candy, and the shade tree that shelters half the coffee in Latin America.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Ilama

A large Central American custard apple with a well-kept secret: some trees bear white-fleshed fruit, others a stunning rose-pink, both sweet and creamy. A lowland Pacific-coast relative of the cherimoya, prized where it grows and rare everywhere else.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Illawarra plum

A curious "plum" from an Australian conifer — the swollen purple-black stalk beneath the seed is the edible part, with a resinous, plum-and-pine flavor used in native jams, sauces, and desserts along the east coast.

Berry Autumn Winter

Imbe

A small, bright-orange African relative of the mangosteen with thin skin and tangy-sweet flesh clinging to a large seed. A hardy savanna and riverbank tree whose fruit is eaten fresh, brewed into wine, and gathered from the wild across eastern and southern Africa.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Japanese quince

The small, hard, intensely tart fruit of the ornamental flowering quince — too sour to eat raw, but so aromatic and vitamin-C-rich that it's a beloved souring and preserving fruit in the Baltics, where it's nicknamed the "northern lemon."

Pome Autumn

Japanese raisin tree

A tree whose "fruit" is really its swollen, twisted flower stalks — crisp, sweet, and tasting of raisin and pear when ripe. An East Asian curiosity long used as a hangover remedy, the source of a compound now studied for exactly that.

Tropical & subtropical Autumn

Jenipapo

A grey-brown tropical fruit famous twice over — as the source of a blue-black body paint used by Amazonian peoples for millennia, and, ripe and soft, as the base of a musky-sweet Brazilian liqueur and syrup that tastes of dried apple and molasses.

Tropical & subtropical Autumn Winter

Jering

A Southeast Asian legume seed eaten with real enthusiasm and real caution — dark glossy beans with a garlicky, faintly rank flavour, and a documented ability to crystallise in the urinary tract if eaten to excess.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Jujube

China's red date — crisp apple-snack when fresh, caramel-chewy "date" when dried, and a four-thousand-year fixture of Chinese kitchens, medicine chests, and wedding beds alike.

Tropical & subtropical Autumn

Jussara

The Atlantic-forest twin of açaí — a slender palm whose purple fruit makes an identical rich drink, but which was nearly wiped out because its prized heart-of-palm can only be taken by felling the tree. Now a conservation cause, with fruit-harvesting the key to saving it.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Kabosu

A round green Japanese seasoning citrus from Ōita Prefecture, used hard and green like sudachi but larger and rounder — its cool, aromatic juice squeezed over grilled fish, hot pot, and sashimi through autumn.

Citrus Autumn

Kakadu plum

A small olive-green fruit from Australia's Top End holding the highest vitamin C ever recorded in a fruit — orders of magnitude beyond oranges. Harvested from wild trees by Aboriginal communities, it powers a growing Indigenous-led industry.

Stone fruit Autumn Winter

Kangaroo apple

An egg-shaped orange fruit of a fast-growing Australian and New Zealand shrub — sweet and mildly tomato-like when fully ripe, but toxic until then. A traditional Aboriginal and Māori food that demands exact ripeness, and a modern source of a steroid-drug precursor.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Karuka

The prized nut pandanus of the New Guinea highlands — a giant screwpine whose huge seed heads yield oily, protein-rich kernels tasting of walnut and coconut. Its harvest is so important that whole families migrate to the forest for "karuka season."

Tropical & subtropical Autumn Winter

Kelubi

A sour, scaly-skinned swamp-palm fruit of the Malay Peninsula — a tart cousin of the snake fruit (salak), used as a souring agent and pickled into a tangy relish. A wild wetland fruit of Southeast Asia, sharp enough to make salak seem sweet.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Keppel

The fabled "deodorant fruit" of Javanese royalty — a russet, trunk-borne cousin of the custard apple whose sweet, mango-and-violet flesh was said to perfume the sweat and breath of the keraton's princesses. Now rare enough to be a conservation cause.

Tropical & subtropical Autumn Winter

Key lime

A small, thin-skinned, intensely aromatic lime with more floral tartness than the common Persian lime — the true lime of Key lime pie, Mexican cooking, and the classic daiquiri.

Citrus Summer Autumn

Kiwano

A spiky orange melon from the African drylands, its alien shell hiding lime-green jelly studded with seeds — refreshing, cucumber-meets-kiwi, and more spectacle than sweetness.

Melon Summer Autumn

Kiwi

A Chinese vine fruit rebranded by New Zealand into a global icon — emerald flesh, edible black seeds, dessert-bright acidity, and more vitamin C than an orange, gram for gram.

Berry Winter Spring

Kiwiberry

A kiwi the size of a grape with smooth, fuzz-free skin you eat whole — sweeter than its big cousin and hardy to brutal frosts. East Asia's mountain forests knew it first; orchards from Oregon to Poland are catching up.

Berry Autumn

Kwai muk

A small, knobbly, orange-red relative of the jackfruit from southern China — soft, sweet-tart, and intensely flavored, with a sticky latex and an irregular shape. A rare backyard treasure, eaten fresh or dried into a chewy sweet.

Tropical & subtropical Autumn

Lai

A Bornean cousin of the durian with vivid orange flesh and — crucially — a far milder smell. Sweet, creamy, and low in the notorious pungency, it's the durian for people who can't abide durian, and a prized fruit of Kalimantan and Sarawak.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Lanzones

Southeast Asia's translucent grape-in-a-jacket — dusty tan clusters hiding segments of sweet-tart, grapefruit-honey flesh. The pride of Camiguin island and Laguna province, celebrated with its own festival.

Tropical & subtropical Autumn

Lemon aspen

A pale, marble-sized rainforest fruit from Queensland with an intense lemon-lime-grapefruit flavor — one of the most versatile Australian native "bush tucker" fruits, used in dressings, sauces, drinks, and desserts.

Citrus Autumn Winter

Lemon drop mangosteen

A small orange Central American relative of the mangosteen whose soft segments taste exactly like a lemon-drop candy — sweet, intensely citrusy, and tangy. A backyard favorite in the tropics, prized for its uncanny sherbet flavor.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Lilly pilly

A pink-to-magenta, crisp Australian berry from a hugely popular hedge and street tree — tart-sweet with a clove-and-apple tang, made into a sharp, rosy jam and bush-food sauces. The fruit millions of Australians walk past every day.

Berry Summer Autumn

Limequat

A small oval citrus crossing a lime with a kumquat — sharply sour flesh wrapped in a thin, sweet, edible rind, so you can pop the whole fruit at once. A cold-hardy, heavy-bearing hybrid bred in Florida for lime flavor in cooler climates.

Citrus Autumn Winter

Lingonberry

The tart red jewel of the Nordic and boreal forests — small, firm, cranberry-like berries whose natural preservative acids let a simple stir of sugar keep them for a year.

Berry Autumn

Longan

The "dragon's eye" — lychee's smaller, tan-shelled cousin with muskier honey flavor and a black seed staring from translucent flesh. Beloved fresh in summer, dried year-round in Chinese kitchens and teas.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Madd

West Africa's fiercely sour liana fruit — a hard green-yellow ball that cracks open on a mass of orange, tamarind-tart pulp packets. Sold by the basket at Dakar roadsides and turned into the juice that defines a Senegalese hot season.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Mahobohobo

The best-loved wild fruit of the miombo woodlands — a russet-brown ball with sweet, sticky, pear-and-caramel pulp that draws whole communities into the bush each autumn across Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi.

Tropical & subtropical Autumn Winter

Mandarin

The easy-peeling, kid-friendly citrus — one of the three ancestral citrus species from which oranges, grapefruits, and most hybrids descend. Sweet, seedless modern types made it a lunchbox superpower.

Citrus Winter Autumn

Mangosteen

The "Queen of Fruits" — a deep-purple shell that opens to snow-white segments tasting of lychee, peach, and citrus sorbet. Once so coveted Queen Victoria allegedly offered a reward for a fresh one.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Mangrove apple

The sour green fruit of a mangrove tree — flat and cheese-scented, with a tangy pulp made into refreshing juices, sherbets, and sour soups across coastal Southeast Asia. A tidal-forest fruit central to Vietnamese and Indonesian riverside cooking.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Maqui

A tiny, intensely dark-purple berry from the forests of Patagonia — sacred to the Mapuche people, among the most anthocyanin-rich fruits measured, and a rising South American superfruit.

Berry Summer Autumn

Marang

Mindanao's aromatic jackfruit cousin — a bristly green pod that opens to soft, snow-white segments tasting of custard, banana, and pear, with an intense perfume and a short shelf life.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Matoa

A brown-shelled Pacific fruit in the lychee family whose translucent flesh tastes like a mix of rambutan, longan, and coconut. The pride of Papua, gathered from towering rainforest trees across New Guinea and the Pacific islands.

Tropical & subtropical Autumn Winter

Maypop

North America's hardy native passionfruit — an egg-shaped green fruit that "may pop" underfoot, filling with sweet-tart, aromatic pulp. A wild fruit of the American South whose flower and leaf are also a famous calming herbal tea.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Medlar

A near-forgotten medieval pome eaten only once it has "bletted" — softened past ripeness into a spiced, apple-butter-like flesh that tastes of cinnamon, date, and toffee.

Pome Autumn Winter

Midyim

A tiny white-and-purple speckled berry from a low Australian coastal shrub — soft, sweet, and gently spicy with a gingery-eucalyptus note. A traditional Aboriginal bush food now popular as a fresh native berry and garnish.

Berry Summer Autumn

Monkey jack

A small, wild jackfruit relative from Southeast Asia — round, rough, and orange-skinned, with sweet-sour deep-orange flesh and crunchy edible seeds. A forest fruit beloved by monkeys and foragers, sharper and smaller than its famous cousins.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Monkey orange

A hard-shelled African savanna fruit like a green cannonball, hiding sweet-sour brown pulp around many seeds. A prized wild food across the bush — but one that must be fully ripe, as the unripe fruit is toxic.

Tropical & subtropical Autumn Winter

Monstera fruit

Yes — that houseplant. In its native jungles the Swiss-cheese plant bears a scaly green cob that ripens over a full year into flesh tasting of pineapple, banana, and jackfruit. Delicious when ready; needle-sharp punishment when rushed.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Mortiño

A small, dark, wild high-Andean blueberry — sweet-tart and intense, gathered from misty páramo slopes above the treeline. The essential fruit of Ecuador's colada morada, the traditional purple drink of the Day of the Dead.

Berry Autumn

Mube

A purple, egg-shaped East Asian fruit like a sweeter akebi that never splits open — sweet, mild, jelly-like pulp full of seeds, foraged in Japan and China. Once an imperial tribute fruit in Japan, still offered ceremonially today.

Berry Autumn

Muntries

Pea-sized "emu apples" from a ground-hugging vine on South Australia's coast — crisp little berries that taste uncannily of spiced Granny Smith apple with a juniper whisper. A Ngarrindjeri staple turned native-food darling.

Berry Summer Autumn

Muscadine

The American South's own grape — thick-skinned, musky-sweet, and utterly unbothered by heat, humidity, and the pests that ruin European vines. Eaten by the porch-bucket, jellied, and fermented since before the colonies had names.

Berry Summer Autumn

Nam-nam

A curious Southeast Asian fruit that grows straight from the trunk — wrinkled, kidney-shaped brown pods that look almost brain-like, with crisp sour-sweet flesh eaten fresh with sugar, pickled, or fried into a tangy snack.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Nance

Small golden fruits with a powerful, cheesy-fermented aroma and an oily, sweet-sour flesh — a nostalgic street snack across Mexico and Central America, sold in syrup or with chili and salt.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Nannyberry

A blue-black North American berry that ripens sweet, soft, and date-like — tasting of banana and raisin around a large flat seed. A wild fruit of the northern woods and hedgerows, gathered late into autumn and eaten fresh or made into fruit butter.

Berry Autumn

Natal plum

A crimson, plum-shaped South African fruit with a sweet-tart, cranberry-strawberry flavor and soft red flesh — eaten fresh and made into a ruby jam. A thorny, salt-tolerant coastal hedge whose milky-sapped unripe fruit ripens into a genuine treat.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Native cherry

An Australian "cherry" that wears its seed on the outside — the sweet, edible part is a swollen red-to-purple stalk, with the single seed sitting on top. A curious sandalwood relative and traditional Aboriginal food, from a tree that grows half-parasitically on the roots of others.

Berry Summer Autumn

Native tamarind

An Australian rainforest fruit whose capsules split to reveal seeds wrapped in bright orange, intensely tart flesh — a native souring fruit used in drinks, sauces, and jams, and a lychee-family relative despite its tamarind-like tang.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Okra

A hibiscus relative grown for its immature seed pods — famous, and often avoided, for the mucilage that thickens a gumbo and ruins a stir-fry, depending entirely on how you cook it.

Berry Summer Autumn

Oleaster

A silvery, mealy, date-like fruit from a hardy Central Asian tree — dry and sweet with a floury texture, eaten across Iran and the Caucasus, where dried senjed is a symbol of love on the Persian New Year table.

Tropical & subtropical Autumn

Olive

The Mediterranean's most consequential fruit — far too bitter to eat off the tree, so the world learned to cure it in brine or press it for oil. A drupe that shaped whole cuisines and economies.

Stone fruit Autumn Winter

Oregon grape

A dusty-blue, tart wild berry from a holly-leaved shrub of the Pacific Northwest — sharp and seedy, made into a beautiful blue-purple jelly and wine. The state flower of Oregon, and a plant whose bright-yellow roots are a famous herbal medicine.

Berry Summer Autumn

Otaheite gooseberry

Pale ribbed fruit that dangles in grape-like ropes straight from the branch, sharp enough to make lemons nervous. A tropical dooryard tree from India to the Caribbean, grown for pickles, candy, and blush-pink syrups rather than fresh eating.

Berry Spring Autumn

Pandanus fruit

The large, segmented orange-red fruit of the coastal screwpine — a spiky ball of wedge-shaped "keys" chewed and juiced across the Pacific and eaten cooked as a staple in Micronesia. A canoe plant of many uses, from famine food to the aroma of Southeast Asian cooking.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Passion fruit

The loudest flavor per gram in the fruit kingdom — a wrinkled shell of golden pulp whose tropical-tart perfume can season a whole cake with one spoonful. Wrinkles mean ready, not ruined.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Patawá

A stately Amazonian palm whose purple-black fruit yields a rich, protein-heavy "milk" and a fine oil so like olive oil that it has been proposed as a substitute. Drunk as a nourishing beverage across the Amazon, it is açaí's oilier, more sustaining cousin.

Tropical & subtropical Autumn Winter

Pawpaw

North America's largest native fruit — a temperate cousin of the cherimoya with soft, tropical-tasting custard flesh of banana, mango, and vanilla, almost never sold because it bruises in a day.

Tropical & subtropical Autumn

Peach palm

A fruit you boil, not bite — the orange-red fruit of a spiny Central and South American palm, cooked in salted water until its dense flesh eats like a cross between chestnut and buttered potato. A pre-Columbian staple sold from street carts across the tropics.

Tropical & subtropical Autumn Winter

Pear

The apple's silkier cousin — buttery, perfumed flesh that ripens from the inside out and rewards patience like few other fruits. Asian pears add a crisp, juicy alternate personality.

Pome Autumn Winter

Pepino

A mild, mellow Andean fruit that looks like a purple-streaked golden egg and tastes like a cross between honeydew and cucumber — refreshing, low-sugar, and eaten like a melon.

Melon Summer Autumn

Persimmon

Autumn's lantern — a glowing orange fruit with two personalities: crisp, sweet Fuyu eaten like an apple, and Hachiya, an astringency bomb that transforms into apricot-honey custard when fully soft.

Tropical & subtropical Autumn Winter

Petai

The stink bean of Southeast Asia — flat emerald pods hiding rows of almond-shaped seeds with a garlic-and-gas pungency that lingers on the eater for a day or more. Adored in Malaysia, Indonesia and southern Thailand, and unmistakable.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Plum

The most varied stone fruit — from candy-sweet Japanese hybrids to honeyed greengages to tart damsons — plus a second life as the prune, the fruit world's most rehabilitated dried good.

Stone fruit Summer Autumn

Pomegranate

The jewel box of fruits — a leathery red vault packed with hundreds of ruby arils, each a burst of sweet-tart juice around a crunchy seed. Persia's ancient symbol of abundance, now a superfood-aisle fixture.

Tropical & subtropical Autumn Winter

Pomelo

The largest citrus on earth and the wild ancestor of the grapefruit — thick-armored, gently sweet, and never bitter, with firm juice vesicles that snap like citrus caviar.

Citrus Autumn Winter

Prickly pear

The cactus orchard's candy — neon-fleshed fruit off the nopal paddle, tasting of watermelon and bubblegum, armed with invisible hairline spines that demand respect and tongs.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Pulasan

Rambutan's sweeter, richer cousin — a dark-red fruit covered in short, thick, blunt spines, with juicy translucent flesh that pulls cleanly from the seed.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Pumpkin

The giant orange berry of autumn — botanically a fruit, culturally a vegetable, and one of the oldest domesticated plants in the Americas. Its flesh, seeds, flowers and even the young shoots are all eaten.

Melon Autumn Winter

Quince

The golden, perfumed ancestor of marmalade — rock-hard and astringent raw, but cooked it turns rose-pink, silky, and intensely aromatic. The most transformative fruit in the kitchen.

Pome Autumn

Rambutan

A lychee cousin in a wild red-and-green hairy shell — sweet, floral, grape-like flesh that makes it Southeast Asia's most fun fruit to peel.

Tropical & subtropical Autumn

Raspberry

The most perfumed berry — a hollow crown of drupelets with huge flavor, huge fiber, remarkably little sugar, and a shelf life measured in hours. Eat them the day you meet them.

Berry Summer Autumn

Ridge gourd

The ridged Indian gourd eaten young and tender — mild, spongy and quick to absorb whatever it is cooked with. Left on the vine it dries into the loofah in your bathroom, which is the same plant at a later stage.

Melon Summer Autumn

Rosehip

The scarlet fruit of the wild rose, one of the richest natural sources of vitamin C — made into syrup, jam, and tea across Europe, and famously bottled as rosehip syrup to keep children healthy in wartime Britain.

Berry Autumn

Roselle

The crimson calyx behind hibiscus tea — not a flower and not quite a fruit, but the fleshy sepal cup that swells around the seed pod after the bloom drops. Steeped from Senegal to Mexico to Egypt, always deep red and sharply tart.

Berry Autumn Winter

Rowan

The bright-orange berry clusters of the mountain ash — sharply bitter and tart raw, but a classic autumn jelly for game and a folklore-laden tree of the far north. Sweeter after frost, always cooked.

Pome Autumn

Rukam

A round red-to-purple fruit of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, crisp and sweet-tart when ripe, astringent before — traditionally rolled between the palms to tame it. A hardy dooryard fruit eaten fresh, stewed, and pickled.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Safou

Central Africa's "butterfruit" — a glossy indigo fruit that roasts into something like warm, tangy avocado butter. Eaten with grilled corn on a million street corners, it's a savory fruit that behaves like a vegetable and nourishes like a meal.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Salal

A dark blue-purple berry of the Pacific Northwest understory — mild, sweet, and slightly spicy, a staple food of the coastal First Nations who dried it into cakes. The plant's glossy leaves are also the florist trade's favorite greenery.

Berry Summer Autumn

Santol

The cotton fruit — a golden tennis ball whose sour rind hides sweet, cottony white segments you suck rather than chew. A Filipino and Thai backyard classic with a serious don't-swallow-the-seed rule.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Sapucaia

A Brazilian rainforest tree whose woody, pot-shaped fruit pops off its own lid to drop rich, creamy nuts — the "paradise nut," rated even finer than the Brazil nut. The emptied urn-like pods, called monkey pots, are a curiosity in their own right.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Satsuma

The seedless, loose-skinned mandarin of Japanese winters — sweet, easy to peel by hand, and hardy enough to grow where other citrus can't. Japan's beloved kotatsu-side mikan and the American South's Christmas orange.

Citrus Autumn Winter

Schisandra

A bright-red berry from an East Asian vine famous for tasting of all five flavors at once — sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and pungent. Brewed into Korea's rosy omija tea and revered in Chinese medicine as a tonic and adaptogen more than eaten as fruit.

Berry Autumn

Sea buckthorn

Vivid orange berries that cling in dense clusters to thorny coastal and mountain shrubs — bracingly sour, wildly nutritious, and rich in a rare fruit oil used for skin and health.

Berry Autumn

Sea grape

The fruit of the salt-tolerant tree that lines Caribbean and Gulf beaches — hanging clusters of green-to-purple grapes with a single big seed, thin sweet-tart flesh, and a jelly so beloved it defines Bahamian and Floridian summers.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Service tree fruit

A small apple- or pear-shaped fruit of an ancient European tree, hard and astringent until it's bletted soft like a medlar — then sweet, spicy, and date-like. A near-forgotten orchard fruit once vital for cider, preserves, and long keeping.

Pome Autumn

Shikuwasa

Okinawa's small green souring citrus — sharp enough to be used like a lime, squeezed over everything from grilled fish to awamori, and grown in villages that keep turning up in longevity research.

Citrus Autumn Winter

Shipova

A rare botanical curiosity — a natural hybrid of the pear and the whitebeam — bearing small, sweet, pear-like fruit with a rosy blush. Grown for centuries in a few European gardens, it fruits reliably where its parents struggle and tastes better than either.

Pome Autumn

Sidr

A small, round, date-like fruit of a sacred thorny tree of the Middle East and Sahel — sweet, mealy, and apple-scented, eaten fresh and dried, and revered across religions. Its blossoms yield the world-famous, prized sidr honey.

Tropical & subtropical Autumn Winter

Sloe

The small, fiercely astringent blue-black fruit of the blackthorn hedge — inedible raw, but the soul of sloe gin. Britain and Europe's classic autumn foraging fruit, best picked after the first frost.

Stone fruit Autumn

Snake gourd

The gourd that grows into a two-metre coiling snake unless a stone is tied to its end — mild, faintly nutty and a monsoon staple across South Asia, where the shape is a practical problem rather than a curiosity.

Melon Summer Autumn

Snot apple

An unglamorously-named but beloved southern African fruit — a woody capsule whose sticky, mucilaginous flesh is chewed for its sweetness like natural gum. A hardy savanna tree fruit and a cherished childhood snack across the region, mucus-like texture and all.

Tropical & subtropical Autumn Winter

Soncoya

The rugged giant of the custard-apple family — a brown, hook-covered fruit the size of a grapefruit hiding fragrant orange pulp that tastes of mango and papaya. A rustic Central American cousin of soursop and cherimoya, usually drunk rather than spooned.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Sour plum

A bright red-to-orange African fruit as sharply sour as its name promises — thin-fleshed, tart, and refreshing, gathered from thorny savanna shrubs and made into juices, jams, and drinks, with a prized oil pressed from its seed.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Soursop

The tropics' creamiest sour fruit — a spiky green giant whose white pulp tastes like strawberry-pineapple custard with citrus lightning. The soul of Latin sorbets and Filipino juice stands alike.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Spaghetti squash

The squash that falls apart into strands. Roast it and the flesh separates into pale, noodle-like threads on its own — a genuine botanical oddity that made it the default low-carbohydrate pasta substitute.

Melon Autumn Winter

Starfruit

The fruit that slices into stars — waxy golden ridges, crisp grape-citrus flesh, and zero prep beyond a knife. A garnish celebrity that's genuinely good eating, with one serious kidney-health caveat.

Tropical & subtropical Autumn Winter

Strawberry guava

A small red guava that tastes genuinely of strawberry, eaten skin and all in a single bite — and simultaneously one of the most destructive invasive plants in the Pacific, where it has swallowed whole Hawaiian forests.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Strawberry tree fruit

A round, red, warty-skinned fruit of a Mediterranean evergreen — soft, sweet-mild, and faintly gritty, ripening in autumn as the tree simultaneously flowers. Eaten fresh but famous distilled into Portugal's fiery medronho and Italian corbezzolo honey.

Berry Autumn

Sudachi

Tokushima's golf-ball citrus, picked hard and green and squeezed over almost everything. Sharper and more herbal than lime, it's the taste of Japanese autumn — grilled fish, matsutake mushrooms, and soba all wait for it.

Citrus Summer Autumn

Sugar-apple

The knobby little custard grenade — scaly segments that pull apart into spoonfuls of perfumed, pear-custard sweetness around slick black seeds. The Philippines' beloved atis, best eaten with your hands.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Tamarillo

An egg-shaped, jewel-toned relative of the tomato — tangy, savoury-sweet flesh with an edible skin best peeled, eaten spooned from the shell or cooked into chutneys across the Andes and New Zealand.

Tropical & subtropical Autumn Winter

Tampoi

A round, velvety brown-to-pink fruit of the Bornean rainforest — crack the thick rind and translucent white or yellow segments spill out, sweet-sour and juicy like a larger, richer rambai. A cherished wild and dooryard fruit of the Malay world.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Teaberry

A small, bright-red berry of a low woodland groundcover in eastern North America — crisp and mild with an unmistakable minty wintergreen flavor. The original source of "teaberry" ice cream and gum, and a traditional forest nibble that persists all winter under the snow.

Berry Autumn Winter

Tejocote

The little golden hawthorn of the Mexican highlands, essential to Christmas — no ponche navideño is legal without it. Crab-apple tart and aromatic, it simmers into the holiday and candies into rielitos the rest of the year.

Pome Autumn Winter

Tomatillo

A green, husk-wrapped fruit at the heart of Mexican cooking — tart, firm, and bright, the essential base of salsa verde. A Physalis cousin of the cape gooseberry, but savory and cooked rather than sweet, and central to Mexican cuisine since Aztec times.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Trifoliate orange

A downy, golf-ball-sized yellow citrus from a fiercely thorny, cold-hardy tree — intensely bitter, sour, and aromatic, inedible raw but made into marmalade and medicine, and the vital rootstock behind much of the world's commercial citrus.

Citrus Autumn

Tropical almond

The flat, almond-shaped fruit of a sprawling tropical beach tree — a thin layer of sweet-sour flesh over a hard stone whose kernel tastes just like an almond. A pantropical shade tree whose fruit is a nostalgic childhood forage across the tropics.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Tucumã

A vivid orange Amazonian palm fruit with dense, fibrous, oil-rich flesh — the beloved filling of Manaus's iconic X-caboquinho sandwich. Intensely carotene-rich, mildly savory-sweet, and eaten with tapioca and cheese across the Brazilian Amazon.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Ugni

A tiny maroon berry with an outsized aroma — sweet-tart and perfumed with strawberry, guava, and bubblegum — foraged in Chile and famous as Queen Victoria's reputed favourite fruit.

Berry Autumn

Umari

An Amazonian fruit with buttery, oily, yellow-orange flesh so rich it's spread on bread like butter — aromatic and savory-sweet, eaten with cassava across the western Amazon. A "vegetable butter" of the rainforest, unique and little-known beyond it.

Tropical & subtropical Autumn Winter

Velvet tamarind

A small, hard-shelled black fruit that cracks to reveal a thin coat of orange-brown, powdery, sweet-sour pulp around a seed — a beloved snack across West Africa and Southeast Asia, sold by the bagful and sucked like a natural sweet-tart candy.

Tropical & subtropical Autumn Winter

White sapote

A citrus-family fruit that tastes nothing like citrus — custard-soft ivory flesh with flavors of banana, peach, and vanilla, and a long folk reputation as a sleep aid.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Wild custard apple

Africa's own member of the custard-apple family — a small, lumpy fruit that ripens from green to orange, with sweet, fragrant, pineapple-and-apricot flesh. A beloved wild food of the savanna, gathered by children across the continent.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Wild medlar

A round, apple-brown African fruit whose soft ripe pulp tastes of dried apple and dates — a beloved savanna snack across southern Africa, gathered from the wild, eaten fresh, and brewed into a traditional drink. No relation to the European medlar it resembles.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn

Wood apple

A cannonball of a fruit from India and Sri Lanka — a grey, wood-hard shell you crack like a coconut, hiding brown, tamarind-ish pulp that smells fermented and tastes like sour caramel raisins. The base of one of South Asia's great market drinks.

Tropical & subtropical Autumn Winter

Yellow mombin

A small, tart, golden tropical fruit in the mango family — cajá to Brazilians, hog plum to the Caribbean — whose intensely aromatic pulp makes some of Latin America's most beloved juices, ice creams, and cocktails.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn